WINNER! Round Seven SPARK $10k Women in Business Grant

Congratulations to Vanessa Murillo, Founder of I Am Grounded for being awarded the SPARK $10k Women in Business Grants.

TRANSCRIPT:

Danielle (SPARK) (00:04):

Oh my God, Vanessa, congratulations. Thank

Vanessa (00:08):

You so much. I'm so excited to be here. Excited to talk. I'm so excited.

Danielle (SPARK) (00:14):

I'm so excited because I've known you for a decade, 15 years. Something crazy. We met in the early days of Scrunch when you were at PPQ and when I saw your name, the judge picked you to win $10,000. I was like, oh my God, I know her. This is so good.

Vanessa (00:35):

I know, I know. That's also why I was like, oh, I don't know if I'm worthy of applying and stuff like that. But obviously you were like, reach out to our community, have a look. Don't discount me or don't discount this because we know each other sort of thing. And I looked at it and I was like, yes, I am worthy of applying for this and it is something that our business would benefit from. And it's been, honestly, when you called me on Friday, I was beyond, I was shocked and I was very excited because that day you came to me like an angel and you really, yeah, it's interesting. I was telling you, I was manifesting a little bit of positivity that day. It's been tough. Staying in business in 2025 is tough. So yeah, honestly, it's come at such a good time for us to really give us that worth of what we're doing is really important and people actually care about what we're doing, not just us. So yeah, I'm really so grateful for this grant and also the opportunity to talk to you today and tell you a little bit more about my business.

Danielle (SPARK) (01:45):

I love that. And I love that you said that feeling of not worthiness I was thinking about because we're going to announce to everybody tomorrow on our email list, and I was thinking about what the headline should be and I kind of landed on the sports quote that's like, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. And it's like, yeah, so just throw your hat in the ring. You are worthy, you are amazing. Your business is amazing. So just go for every opportunity. So I'm glad you said that, but let's tell everybody who you are and what you do.

Vanessa (02:17):

Yes. Okay, so I am Vanessa. Vanessa. I'm one of the co-founders of I Am Grounded. So I'm grounded is a snap company that's a little bit different. We actually work with upcycled ingredients, namely the beautiful fruit that surrounds the coffee beams on the tree. So we actually upcycle this for, obviously it's antioxidant properties, but it's a byproduct, it's a waste byproduct. And we turn that into a range of naturally functional snacks and beverages soon to come. And the idea is to give you a very generous and mindful energy boost without giving you the crash, often associated with too many energy drinks or too much coffee. And at the same time being able to reduce that waste in coffee farming and helping to give another supply chain or a value supply chain to the coffee farmers who grow our coffee.

Danielle (SPARK) (03:15):

Oh my God, it's just so cool. Before I met you, I didn't know that coffee was a fruit. I didn't know, I just thought, I don't know. I don't think I even thought about where it came from. I just thought about it. Once it gets to the roasted bean stage or ground stage, that's really it. So when you told me that it has actually a fruit and there is all of this waste product, I was absolutely blown away. How did you find out about this whole problem?

Vanessa (03:43):

Yeah, so that's actually one of the most common responses we get. And I don't, obviously can't blame people because we don't grow much coffee in Australia. We grow a very small amount, and that's not namely in the Capricorn Gold Coast and up to north Queensland region. So we don't see the process much like chocolate, we don't really know it's a cacao, it's a pod. But for me, I am from Colombia, my family Colombian, and I moved, migrated to Australia when I was very young, hence the Australian accent. So I grew up here. So I grew up in the coffee, kind of having two eyes to the coffee industry. So my parents are actually coffee importers. Dad was a coffee trainer and coffee buyer as well. And mom had retail coffee chain businesses and I obviously saw the explosion of the coffee, the third, now fourth wave of specialty coffee in Australia from when we were drinking instant coffee at home to now the rise in the growth of the pod machines and the espresso machines and filtered coffees.

(04:45):

So I've got definitely those two perspectives. And from an origin side, when I was little, I was accompanying my parents on these trips and it was common knowledge that the coffee fruit was the byproduct and it was commercialized, but not to the scale obviously of the beans. And when I was working, obviously when I met you at PPQ, you actually were a catalyst to inspire me to actually pursue my, at that time it was side hustle. And I remember sitting down with you and you telling me about CEO and we had a coffee and we were talking about, and I was telling you, oh look, I'm walking to work every day and I'm feeling inspired to start my own thing. And you were like, look, there's a lot of female entrepreneurship networking you can connect with. Have a look at CEO, have now corrals and have a look at social enterprise for purpose and obviously for profit.

(05:37):

And that's what got me ticking. And it was actually, honestly, that conversation we had was one of the catalysts to kind of pursuing this where I saw my parents bringing in coffee beans and working with the coffee fruit. And then I saw on the other side the explosion of specialty coffee and people like you, me, very busy wanting smarter snacks. I looked to Europe and the US and I saw that coffee, fruit, green coffee bean, all these things were already starting to be used as ingredients for snacks and drinks. And so those two things came together and I was also wanting more challenge in my day to day. And then you came along and were like, do it interrupt, obviously.

Danielle (SPARK) (06:20):

Oh yeah. A good way to add more challenge to your day, run a business. Yeah, exactly.

Vanessa (06:25):

But all these green lights, the green lights, and that's where I'm grounded started and we started small. We started hand making our products in the test kitchen. We knocked on the cafe's doors and said, Hey, you're a coffee shop, this makes sense. And now we've been in business for six years. We sell into the biggest retailer in Australia, Woolworths across the country, which has been an insane milestone. We sell into Harris Farms, airports, across gyms, office channels. So we've definitely, naivety was a massive play in the playbook, but also just self-belief that we were onto something and that green light was giving us the go. And obviously there's been lots of covid and family stuff and then just usual cashflow problems and you have when you scale and new manufacturers and new packaging and all that stuff. But those are challenges that we've been able to put our heads together and come to our network and really figure out. But yeah, it's definitely, now that we're in six years, it's definitely now a really good turning point that we've seen where we've kind of gone from bootstrapping into some capital raising and now we're looking at some expansion and different sort of products as well. So lots happening with I'm grounded.

Danielle (SPARK) (07:48):

Oh my God, I love it so much. It's such a good story. I remember when you were making them in the test kitchen and I was always so blown away at how much customer feedback you got, sampling and getting the bar into the hands of other people. So I've always watched that process and thought you just really care about your customers and their experience and getting the product right for them. So yeah, I'm not surprised that you are here now doing amazing things.

Vanessa (08:19):

Thank you. And I think that customer-centric perspective has helped us with obviously the new chapter, which is where we're going now with targeting athletes. And this has all come about from listening to our customers and really understanding the case. I guess, what's the job of our product and where is that going to benefit the best In a tricky market where trying to be something for everyone is just hard and throwing things at a wall, seeing if it sticks also hard. So right now, this is kind of the new direction, and part of the Spark application was looking at how are we going to talk to our customers in 20 25, 20 26 and what that looks like. And yeah, just that explosion of running clubs and the growth in community wellness has really come to us actually. So we are now starting to see that this is a strategy and a plan forward for talking to our customers going forward. And we've started to become our customers, we're kind of our customers as well. So it's like I almost feel like we're entering a new stage in our business where there's more flow in what we're doing.

Danielle (SPARK) (09:39):

I love that. So what are you actually going to spend the 10 K on?

Vanessa (09:43):

Yes, yes. Well, okay, so we are going onto that we, because obviously we're a functional energy, essentially we're an energy business, we're selling better energy and we didn't want to go down the V and the Red Bull and the Monsters and sort of vibe, but we are active Lachlan and Lachlan, the other co-founder taken on triathlon. I've always been quite active. I love sport being hiking, running, walking, whatnot. And we thought, let's actually go to this community, not just have a very broad, because for us we were like, our customer is an everyday person that is on the go. But that's a very broad kind of understanding of what the customer is because there's a move between a must have and okay to have and a must have is when you are using it for performance, you're using it for fuel to fuel your workouts for a race, et cetera.

(10:42):

And we noticed that with the triathlon community, they already were consuming our products or ultra runners, ultra-marathon runners were already consuming our product and we weren't talking to them because we were trying to do the everyday person. But realizing that everyone is kind of on the go sort of personally. So being more specific. So the money we're going to use for is to speak to our community, go out and do sampling at different run clubs. So we're based in Brisbane, we've linked up with some run clubs here. We're going to do a big community day where people can come and taste the product and really want to get people excited about the super bars that we have and really understand the performance side of the products. And then we want to do obviously some stuff in Sunshine Coast and

Danielle (SPARK) (11:27):

In the Gold Coast and start doing some more things in the sports space, which just makes sense obviously to us. And we've already started seeding the strategy and we've had, I was having a look at my analytics yesterday and we've already had, we even have people buy on our website and they make notes on the checkout and saying, I'm doing this triathlon at the end of this year and I love that your guys are celiac. I saw your bars. We've started talking to the tri communities and stuff. And yeah, super keen, we're starting to see people come and actually buy from these communities. So for us it's really exciting. That means that we've got some good strategy and then we just have to implement it, which is the exciting part of it. So good. And I love that. And it's really interesting because people ask what makes a good application for the grant? And I'm always saying, you've got it. If I gave you 10 K, you've got to know how to use it. You can't just say marketing because that's so broad, and I love that about your business is you go out, you talk to your customers, you try new things, you actually put yourself out there, you listen to feedback, you've adjusted the product, this you're seeing results, and now you're like, cool, now let's amplify it. Which is so cool. That's like marketing 1 0 1.

Vanessa (12:50):

Yeah, exactly. And it's hard to do as a founder. You're wearing so many hats and sometimes it's hard to see clearly when you do, for example, writing this for this application and then also doing a video. I actually have to sit down and think, okay, broadly to my strategy, what is it going to be about my strategy and what can I actually say here that actually I will use to further my strategy and actually implement? Because it is one thing for writing it, but the other thing actually doing it, as a often I would do things, I would write a whole strategy for the year and then three, four months in, I'd just be like, oh, we didn't do that, but this holds you accountable to that. And it's also testing and learning what works and what doesn't work, and being able to be really bullish on what you believe.

(13:39):

And so that's why when I applied for this, I was like, this makes sense because we have already tested the sport community and we know, so now let's go and actually allocate some more funding and time and people to do this. And that's obviously why it was application. This is quite rare in general to be able to write about these sort of things. So it was, yeah, that's why I was so surprised. I was like, this is great. This is amazing. Honestly, I was shocked, but also I was glad that confirmation of what we're doing as well and how we've thought about what we're doing. Yeah.

Danielle (SPARK) (14:14):

And that was going to be my question, what was the process like for you applying for grants? Have you applied for other grants in the past or was this a new thing and how did you find the actual process?

Vanessa (14:25):

Yeah, definitely. I have applied. I've applied for a few, I haven't applied for a lot, but I've been applying for more recently. I've just been a bit more, I think, bullish around what our strategy is. But I think the application, like what I was saying before is a lot more clearer around this, have a strategy and then how are we going to implement it? And for me, how my brain works. So it was great to apply for, because I've applied for other grads where I thought lucky and I've thought we're insane fit where everything's great, we're going to get this. And then it's like there's no, we're not giving you any feedback, there's nothing. You didn't get it. And it's like, okay, well maybe it's because were we too broad? Were we not strategic enough? Did we not use the right jargon? And it's hard, you just don't know. So with this grant, I felt it was pretty good and I was able to download it, fill it in, really think about my strategy and able to use it on something that I will implement rather than just fluff of like, oh yeah, I might use that in the future or have specific quotes and stuff, but you don't know in six, seven months. So it was honestly very, very flowy for me to fill this in and I should do it, and I quite enjoyed it. So I will be recommending the application to others. Yeah.

Danielle (SPARK) (15:51):

Oh my God, that is so good to hear. I love it. I think you are absolutely incredible and I could not think of a more deserving winner. So thank you for sharing your business and your experience with the Spark community. We will put all of the links to your product so everyone can jump in and grab one for themselves or grab one within, they're at Woolies next and give it a try for themselves. But I have insane confidence and belief in you. You are going to do amazing things and I can't wait to follow your journey.

Vanessa (16:22):

Oh, thank you so much. Likewise. And thank you for putting together this program and having the opportunity to actually do this for female founders is why a lot of people still believe in entrepreneurship and obviously in these spaces. So it's really important what you're doing, the work you're doing is incredibly important.

Danielle (SPARK) (16:42):

Oh my God, you've made my day. Thanks, Vanessa.