The pair were both battling debilitating health issues at the time.
“We were both kind of in the depths of our illnesses,” Margo says.
“I had chronic fatigue and endometriosis and a bit of an eating disorder. Rosa had an eating disorder and a training obsession.”
Rosa was a successful middle-distance runner for about eight years, representing New Zealand around the world.
“It was an incredible experience and I went to so many amazing places, but unfortunately, I went down the pathway of becoming obsessed with training, which is super common in the world of sport because you’ve got this end goal and you will do everything and anything to reach that end goal.”
With a condition called relative energy deficiency in sport (Red-S) she was chronically underweight.
“I suppose we were both kind of sucked into that eating disorder realm, that vicious cycle,” Margo says. “Our relationship with food was terrible.”
That strong mindset Rosa needed to achieve in sports made it a “hard shell to crack”, Margo says.
“I think all of a sudden her walls fell down, and so did mine. That’s when we actually talked about what we’d been through and what we wanted and how we saw our future.
“We talked about it and decided that a lot of other women and people in general were going through this. So let’s create something to help educate people for the better.”
It was about creating a new lifestyle for themselves before becoming role models to help educate others, Rosa says.
“That was a big thing for us,” she says.
“It was something that helped us early on in those stages of recovery when we were creating those habits. Knowing that we were role models for other people was a driver for us to keep ourselves well and to look after ourselves. People were looking at us and wanting to do what we are doing.”
Rosa is a qualified nutritionist, but aside from that neither of the sisters has studied anything business-related.
“We started the business feeling safe; we were both living at home, so there was no financial pressure as such to succeed at a really fast rate,” says Margo.
“I think we were quite naive when we started and we just kind of started it on a whim, thinking, ‘oh, this could be a cool idea’.”
For the first couple of years, it was more of a passion project, she says.
But Rosa’s sporting mindset crossed over nicely into business goal setting.
“You can see Rosa is the more money-driven one out of the two of us and is more strict on a goal,” Margo says. “If she wants to get here, she’ll get there.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more from
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics – it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
