We were lucky to catch up with Brittany McDermott recently and have shared our conversation below.
Brittany, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
This time last year, Jacob and I were both looking for growth, for change, for what we were always meant to do. Jacob was in search of an advancement in his career, I was searching for that next step in my life. It was my birthday last year (October 16th), where I said, “I know Jake and I will do big things.” I knew it then, but I had absolutely no idea what that even meant, I just knew it deep deep down and the biggest thing of all, I BELIEVED it. l believed it so much that it led us to where we are today in our business. I’ve learned that owning a business is nowhere near easy, and probably one of the hardest things l’ve ever done. BUT having the best group of people surrounding us, is what has made this so successful. J+B Wellness Company is dedicated to promoting a healthy lifestyle and making nutritious options available to everyone. We believe whole plant foods heal and strengthen our bodies, which is why our products contain minimally processed ingredients. On our menu you will find smoothie bowls, smoothies, fresh pressed juice, toast, sandwiches, overnight oats, hot cider, hot chocolate, matcha, coffee, and longevity treats. We want people to understand why it is important to eat predominately whole, plant-based foods and how that positively impacts our bodies and over well-being.
This is just step one of JB, watch to see where we go because it’s only up up from here! We hope it inspires people to believe in theirselves-whatever that may be. Believe that they can do it, and then go after it. When most people thought I was crazy for letting go of a steady paycheck, or letting go of all the education I received in college, or leaving a job for something that didn’t exist at the time, I believed I could do it. I believed I could create the life I wanted, the business I wanted, and I did it! Jake and I’s wedding song was “From the Ground Up” by Dan and Shay and if you’ve heard it, it truly speaks of our life together. We are building this business, this life, together “from the ground up.” So do what makes you scared, go after it, go after that dream, and remember to just believe in yourself because you can do it, if you put your mind to it. We are the owners of J+B Wellness Company!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
**shared a lot of this in the last question.
We are a family of 4: Jacob (dad), Brittany (mom), Grayson, and Aiden. 5 years ago, we decided to start focusing on our overall health and wellness. We adopted a predominantly whole-food, plant-based lifestyle and have focused on getting as many whole foods into our diet as possible. Almost 2 year ago, we decided to add in smoothie bowls for lunch and we haven’t looked back since! We all eat one every day for lunch! It’s been life changing. We are excited to start sharing our love of health and wellness with everyone.
Here is my entire blog of how we got to this point today. Sorry, it is long, but it is detail for detail to where we are today and when we first opened JB!
We are the owners of J+B Wellness. We decided to create this company and share our healthy lifestyle with you. We have been plant based for over 4.5 years and this is the best we have ever felt. We want to share our story over a few posts, so stay with us to learn more.
5 years ago, I (Brittany) was very unhealthy and after every meal, my stomach would always hurt. I would take numerous amounts of medicine to feel somewhat normal, but I never felt normal in my own body. Jacob had a lot of acne and would wake up in the middle of the night with terrible stomach pains. We knew we needed to make a lifestyle change, so we went on a journey and tried many different diets such as; Paleo, high-fat, low-carb, no sugar, etc. Nothing helped. We would eat “healthy” on the weekdays and have our giant “cheat meal” ALL WEEKEND LONG because we “deserved” it. It’s made things so much worse. I felt more sick than ever. I was lost and had no idea what to do.
I LOVE watching documentaries and randomly watched @wthfilm. It literally changed my direction in life. I immediately cut out meat that night. I introduced the documentary to Jacob, who decided to join me in this new direction in healthy living. Over the course of the next six months Jacob and I slowly moved towards a full plant based lifestyle.
December 26, 2017, we decided together that we would officially take the leap and become 💯 plant based. We started adding in smoothies for breakfast, that we still eat today, we added in more plant based meat alternatives, and ate veggies we never had before. The journey didn’t start off all sunshine ☀️ and roses 🌹, but more bloating and detoxing away from our old way of eating. This began our new way of living to get us to where we are today.
After two months of going full plant based, we added in more whole foods such as more smoothies that contained kale, spinach, and chard, we made homemade juices that helped cleanse our bodies, and we ate more whole food dinners with added meat alternatives. We decided to try something that was trending and is still trending today and that was intermitting fasting, which means our eating window was from 11:00 a.m. to 7 p.m. We only ate for 8 hours at a time, this is called the 16:8 method of intermitting fasting and it WORKED! Jacob lost 21 pounds and I lost 12 pounds in just a few months and we did this by sticking with the clean whole foods and only eating for 8 hours a day. At this point in our journey, we felt success and we began feeling the overall effects of eating a whole food plant based way of life.
We were getting ourselves healthy for the next journey of our lives, parenthood. I (Brittany) bought ALL the books and listened to many podcasts about pregnancy and “veganism.” There is actually a lot out there! (You will realize I LOVE researching and gaining knowledge, which the main reason of how we are here today). Anyways, after six months of switching to a whole food plant based lifestyle, we were pregnant with our first son, Grayson! For the first few months of my pregnancy, I really struggled to eat anything at all, MORNING SICKNESS is real and it is awful, but after that I buckled down and stayed focus on eating healthy for my son and myself.
Over the course of my first pregnancy, I ate very healthy and stayed focused on eating whole plant based foods, smoothies were my go to, juices were added for extra hydration, and we started getting rid of meat alternatives and exchanging them for more whole plant based protein sources such as lentils, beans, tempeh, tofu, chickpeas, peanut butter, and quinoa. I was determined to have a healthy baby, and that we did! Overall, I had a great pregnancy with no issues other than the morning sickness, the terrible back aches at the end, and the breech baby resulting in a C-section (rough recovery).
On March 5, 2019 our first son was born, Grayson Thomas McDermott! Our full plant based baby was here, he weighed 7lbs 12oz! We continued to share our healthy lifestyle with our son, as he grew, we introduced him to more whole plant based foods, he never knew the difference. He ate tempeh, tofu, kale, chard, beans, lentils, fruits, etc. and he LOVED it. He was a quick eater and ate a TON, as I was beyond thankful for that because breastfeeding did not workout and therefore, I felt very guilty to give him soy formula over my breastmilk, but I realized it is what it is.
As Grayson continued to grow and was in the 90th percentile for height and weight, we focused on getting more clean with our food choices. We continued to gain more knowledge through research and when we learned something new that would benefit us that we were not doing, we started implementing very quickly into our lifestyle. We moved towards eating all organic foods and eating 90 to 95% whole plant based foods. We loved this journey we were on and we could feel the effects in all parts of our lives such as when we worked we had more energy and endurance than we ever had even as athletes in college, we were losing more weight and gaining more muscle, and our stomach issues were slowing disappearing. We were gaining our lives back! It felt great!
Our son had just turned 1! What an exciting time to finally say, “we made it through the first year!” One day after Grayson’s first birthday party on March 8, 2020, we found out we were expecting AGAIN and I was already 5 weeks along. I have to admit that I cried because I was not mentally or physically ready for this AGAIN. C-Sections are hard hard hard and it takes time to recover and 11 months is not enough. Jacob cried tears of joy and it was the sweetest moment. It took me a few weeks to mentally prepare myself again for the journey of a baby, pregnancy was never hard for me, but postpartum WAS! It was the hardest thing I have EVER gone through.
After finding out that we were having another baby, we put our house up for sale and moved into a much bigger one. We were going to need the space for a family of 4. As we got settled into our new home, we decided to have a gender reveal and house warming party, we invited all of our family and friends over. In my mind, I was hoping and praying this was a girl because postpartum was so hard that I only wanted to have to do it one more time.
IT WAS A BOY! My heart broke and truthfully, I cried like a baby because I really really wanted a girl, so I could be done with having kids. Weirdly enough, I always said I wanted three (it was either 2 boys and a girl or ALL boys), but postpartum is HARD! After a few weeks of finding out it was a boy, Jacob and I finally landed on a name and I started getting excited for Gray to have a best friend and like I said, I have ALWAYS thought I would have two boys first. My second pregnancy went better than my first and we stuck to very healthy plant based options and I craved fruit! Aiden flipped into the correct position, which gave us more hope this time of not having another C-Section!
November 13, 2020, Friday the 13th, Aiden was born! Overall my delivery was a great experience, it was great to get to experience birth two different ways. I am thankful for both. Welcoming Aiden into the world put us on the path to where we are today. Sometimes the universe knows exactly what you need and when you need it. I now say, “sometimes the best things in life happen unexpectedly”.
January 3, 2021, we came across a challenge from one of our favorite influencers, Earthy Andy, called Plant over Processed. This challenge was to go 30 days with little to no processed foods and add in more plant based options. We decided we wanted to take that next step in our journey and embark on this challenge. We added in more smoothies, and this was officially when we added smoothie bowls! I remember thinking, “a smoothie bowl for lunch? This is WEIRD, but let’s try it anyways!” HA!
So we ate smoothie bowls for lunch every single day and our world changed forever. We did it, we did not eat a single processed thing for an entire month. The feeling was unreal, we felt so good inside. Now, we know no processed foods for life was unrealistic, so we added a few back in, but the ONE thing that stuck with us was the SMOOTHIE BOWLS! We continued to eat them every single day for lunch. We tried to eat something else for lunch one day and I CRAVED a bowl. We knew from that day forward, it would be smoothie bowls for life. HA.
From eating leftovers and salads to smoothie bowls, we noticed a HUGE difference in the way we felt. The BIGGEST difference was the energy after lunch. After eating leftovers, even as plant based options, we still felt “tired” or “sluggish” in the afternoons. This was not our best selves and after eating smoothie bowls for lunch we did realized you did NOT have to feel this way. That is one of the MAIN reasons we will continue to eat smoothie bowls for lunch even in the winter. We cannot go back to feeling tired or sluggish when now we know what is it is like to have that energy.
As the year went on, we continued eating our favorite thing ever, smoothie bowls. As we traveled, we would find places that would sell bowls and we would go there. I had to have a bowl every day, I wanted that energy that good feeling inside. Once you feel it, you can’t go back.
Many people noticed our bowls and would ask about them and a few of our friends were inspired to start making their own. Over the next few months, many people would ask if we would ever sell our bowls. We laughed and thought, “No way!” Then one night, so many people were asking that Jake and I discussed how we could sell our bowls. We decided to dive in, start our own business, become a LLC, jumped through many hurdles, and well HERE WE ARE TODAY!
We are so excited to share our love of bowls with you, they will becoming to you soon! We have a when and where and it will be posted soon! Stay tuned everyone…St. Charles is FINALLY getting a smoothie bowl place!
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
How I built our social media was a full year of dedication when I had a full time job, starting a new business, running the social media, and trying to grow our business from nothing. I started the page, created content daily such as posts, reels, stories. The biggest thing I learned is that people love seeing YOU the face of the business and connecting to you and your story. When I would post our faces such as our family that would get the most views and likes. I also learned that you want two pictures in a post, so people will swipe to get more interactions. I got a lot of my followers from doing reels and using songs that were trending. After a year long of working on the page, I have now passed it over to a social media person!
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
This is something I am very passionate about. As a past teacher, I worked very hard to create a positive environment in my classroom and I do this in the business. I have gotten the best feedback from my team that this is the BEST team and company they have ever worked for. I create this environment by first paying well and then messaging and sending positive feedback to all of my team. I allow them to feel important by helping me make decisions. I also have monthly team meetings and we have a GroupMe where we give information as well as feedback. When you give your employees a positive work environment and then they feel compensated for with money, they will work harder for your business and that is exactly what I have done.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jbwellstl.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/j.b.wellness/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JBWellnessSTL?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Image Credits
All done by me