In November, we attended three events that we would like to share. One is the grand opening party for Sacred Sounds Yoga, which was founded by our friend Stephanie and is a yoga and tai chi studio in Greenwich Village, NYC. In between cool yoga demonstrations and some amazing vegetarian food, we provided Heart Juice to well over 150 guests.

We then attended the Defy Ventures kick-off party. Defy Ventures is a non-profit NYC organization that provides carefully selected, ambitious men who have criminal histories with intensive entrepreneurship training, character development, and life-transforming opportunities, while inspiring and equipping the private sector to apply its resources to this talent pool. We met Defy’s directors Ann and Kene at a Wicked Start entrepreneurship event and wanted to support their mission. Check out this video:

Perhaps, the strangest thing happened to us at Rutgers Entrepreneurship Day. We were there to present Heart Juice to students and a panel of judges. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple was the keynote speaker; he talked about Apple’s history and his experiences of starting the company. This was an important event since Apple is such a dominant company and also because of the recent death of Steve Jobs. There were at least 1,000 people that attended. After his speech, he walked pass our booth and we gave him a bottle of Heart Juice. He drank it and said, “Tastes great! You guys are very clever!”. We ended up winning Rutgers’ “Best in Food Science” award and came away with a Woz photo and newly Woz autographed iPhones.

2011 was a great year and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2012. We wish everyone a joyous, healthy and prosperous New Year!

Every night, we would target 30 to 35 stores to visit. The next day, we pack our Civics full of cases then hit the road by 7 am. We take the list we prepared the previous night and visit each store, traveling as much as 300 miles a day. In all our years growing up in New Jersey, we’ve never heard of some of the towns we found ourselves in. From Mullica Hills and Pitman to Frenchtown and Blairstown and Sparta, we got to see so much more of New Jersey in 1 day that we never saw in our 20+ years of living here.

Every day of the week for us is a Monday and we don’t return home until 8 or 9 pm. Sometimes, we find ourselves on the road so much we forget to eat! Fortunately, we’ve gotten a lot better at stopping throughout the day to give ourselves a break. When we would arrive at the next store on the list and it would be closed for the day, that’s when we knew it was time pack it up and head home. As far as successes go, if we signed 1 store that day, we considered it a successful day. Some days were a lot better than others for sure, so we take those good days to outweigh the bad.

Our visits in each town were short-lived since we were there for “business”; however, each place has left an impression on us. From Langhorne, PA to New York City and every New Jersey town in-between, there remained one constant: the people. In visiting so many towns and so many stores, we’ve had the pleasure to meet so many great people, too many to name in this post. We met people who share our vision and our passion to change the world. We enjoy talking with store owners and the customers of those stores.

Other than the American Heart Association, we’ve found that there really are no other organizations raising awareness for heart disease. We hope to change that by being the walking billboard. Hopefully by having our product on the shelves or in people’s hands, Heart Juice can serve as a constant reminder to eat and drink healthier. Each person we meet, we feel we’re raising heart disease awareness… and we’ve only just begun.

Here is an article written by Erica Lamberg of Home News Tribune: http://www.MyCentralJersey.com/article/20111115/NJNEWS/311150030/A-Juicy-Idea

We’ve also done a few samplings at Hackensack Street Festival, Dean’s Natural Foods and Big Bear Natural Foods. It’s such a happy moment when we get to meet people and talk to them about our beverage, eating healthy and exercise. The conversations get really interesting and we learn something new every time. We would like to sample in as many stores as possible, so look out for us at a local health food store near you. Can’t get to a store? Beth Christian from Jersey Bites did a review on Heart Juice: Check it out here.

Yesterday, we trekked through the rain to New Jersey Performing Arts Center to attend the NJ Social Entrepreneurship Summit:

“The purpose of this summit is to raise the profile of social entrepreneurship in New Jersey by bringing leaders of the social sector and entrepreneurs who address social and environmental problems in their businesses together to learn from and support one another.  We are particularly interested in bringing together leaders who are tackling these social and environmental issues in New Jersey and encouraging these social entrepreneurs or would-be social entrepreneurs to use innovative, sustainable, and profitable business ventures and social impact organizations as their vehicle for long-term change.”

It was such an inspiration to meet other social entrepreneurs that not only want to start a venture but also change the world for the better. The conference had 3 conversations with leaders in social entrepreneurship and 2 break out sessions: “So you want to be a social entrepreneur?” and “Show me the money”. Some of the key quotes I remember were, “You are not a great entrepreneur until you are a social entrepreneur.” and “Profits with a purpose”. We even had a chance to ask a question and received a good hearty applause from the audience.

Can’t wait until the next summit!

In this case, we had just recently bought a “gently” used cargo van from Craigslist so we thought that we might as well put it to good use; unfortunately, the van’s payload could only carry one pallet at a time. As painstaking as we both knew it would be to make 22 trips to and from our warehouses, there was really no other cost-effective alternative to hauling the pallets ourselves.

Loading the pallets onto the van was the easy part but driving a van with a 2,000 lb payload 30 miles one-way in New Jersey was another story. When we finally arrived at our warehouse, the only way we could offload the pallet from the van was to break the pallet down then rebuild the pallet case by case one at a time.

Looking back at what we’ve done so far, we wouldn’t want it any other way. Especially since we’ve learned more about the industry and what it will take to make things work.

We eagerly went to our production facility at 7AM and by 8PM loaded the first pallet of Heart Juice on to our van.

Enjoy a taste of our production day: