Jubilance Founder, Kathy Cash joins me, her daughter, to discuss running a family business, life as a working mom, some crazy snake stories from Girl Scouts, & how to best deal with a dead plant. This month we’re celebrating Motherhood all month long, so I thought it only fitting to interview my mother first!
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Alice: Okay. Hi, everyone! It’s Alice Cash. Welcome and thank you so much for listening today. As you know it’s May, and May is the month for mothers because Mother’s Day is happening. I thought it was only fitting that I joined my own mother on this podcast today. I’m talking to her about her life, about raising three girls, which is crazy, and her founding of jubilance. I’m so excited to get to talk to her today. Hi, mom!
Kathy: Hi, Alice! Thanks for having me on.
Alice: Thanks for being here. You’re a mom of three girls. One of whom is me, who is your favorite, of course. What was it like having three girls?
Kathy: Well, I still have three girls, but definitely it’s been a lot of fun. It’s very dramatic. There’s always something going on. All three of you are very creative and adventurous. Sometimes it can be tiring because I’m trying to keep up with you, but it’s actually it’s been a joy.
Alice: What’s your favorite experience you had with each of us?
Kathy: Well, I mean, first of all your birth because we definitely we didn’t know, I know it sounds crazy that we didn’t find out ahead of time even though I had ultrasounds, and they could tell you the birth of your child, or the sex of your child, but and your dad and I waited until you were born and found out healthy baby and a girl, which was perfect. Then by the time we got to Gretchen, the third one, it was just like, “Yay!” It was a relief to know that she was a girl, because we already knew what to do. We already had everything. Then I think it’s just like those little moments of everything that you do, like your first steps and then of course, that first step across this stage for a high school diploma, or your college, or watching you direct a play, or your sister’s play volleyball or soccer. Just everything was, it’s just been fun. I can’t really say that anything would be like that one moment because those moments are still going on right now. It’s just like, it’s all fun. Just watching you grow as a woman.
Alice: That’s great. Okay. What are you up to this week for Mother’s Day?
Kathy: Oh, I don’t know. Probably we’ll go on a bike ride. Your dad as you know, Alan and I always ride bikes every weekend. We’ve always ridden bikes since we dated and it’s just a fun way for us to get out and explore. It was a perfect during the pandemic too, perfect way of social distance. We’d like flat rides. We like riding around neighborhoods, looking at houses, and flowers, I like picking it gardens. Just probably easy.
Alice: Yeah. You have been doing a lot in quarantine. Can you talk a little bit about your pandemic experience? What have you been up to in it?
Kathy: Well, first of all, it started with you. You were in the epicenter, New York City as well as your younger sister Gretchen. Of course, you became very ill. So that kind of set the stage as far as, or it was just overwhelming to learn that you were so sick and not be able to go to you and help you. I think because of that, we’re all really careful and because Gretchen came then and flew home from New York City and she actually hasn’t even been back to work. I mean, she works, but she works from here in San Diego and she her office has been closed since March last year 2020. That’s hard for a 24-year-old woman to be living at home with her parents who are socially distant. I know a lot of you out there too. Our listeners are the same. That was a tough year.
What did I do during the pandemic? I did hang out with them, our daughters. So Gretchen was here and then Samantha, our middle daughter came home. She played volleyball in Europe. She’s a professional ballplayer. She came home, but then she left again. You’re in Switzerland opened back up. Now she’s back again. Her life kind of just went on, while we just still seem to stay here. So Gretchen and I, and you Alice came here for a little while. We made candles. I’ve made soap, which was a disaster.
Alice: Our soap was so gross. It was like black.
Kathy: Yeah, we’re not good at it. Even though I keep trying, I’m so failure. I pressed flowers. I made a victory garden. I fertilized my garden. I pruned my roses. I fertilized my roses. I planted a lot of seeds. Just mostly tried to be outside and we’re fortunate because we live in San Diego, so we can be outside about 90% of the time. That was good. On top of it even with all the bad of the pandemic, I was able to be around all of you as adults. It was fun because your dad and I got to spend a lot of time with each of you and you came home for a little while. Having three adult daughters in the house was a little dramatic, but it was a lot of fun. It gets to do that when you’re our age, having your adult daughters move, or adult children move back home for a little while. I mean, that was a blessing in disguise.
Alice: That’s very nice. I’m glad you think of it like that.
Kathy: Yeah. I mean, ‘cause all the people, I mean, there’s so much going on with COVID and we were very lucky that we could all be together. Yeah. I think it helped to have been able to be together and do all these projects together. Make soap.
Alice: Yeah.
Kathy: ‘Cause no one believe me if I told them that my soap turned black. At least you know. You were witness to it. It was terrible.
Alice: Yeah. It really was, but what’s not terrible are your roses. My mom is a rosarian and can you explain what that is? What…
Kathy: Well, basically just means that I have a fondness for roses and like to grow them. Yeah. It’s a good question, when Gretchen went away to college and I was an empty nester and we were just starting Jubilance. I was sad and trying to fill my time with work.
Then we went to the state fair, Alan and I. There was too many, we always like to go to the Rose Show. We’re looking at all the flowers and there was a man there that was soliciting memberships and my husband said, “Kathy, you should join us and it was $5 to join the San Diego Rose Society. So I joined and I went to the meeting and they talk. They had speakers that talk about how to grow your roses or how to grow dirt. Since I was a new member, I had to stand up and introduce myself and they said, “Well, how many roses do you have? I think I had like three bushes and I found out that people there have hundreds, hundreds of flowers. One woman has 800 rose bushes and they know the names to all the roses.
The interesting that you said is that they’re all really very kind and I would even suggest to your listeners that if you can get into a garden group or through Facebook or through your local parks and rose department or something. There so many people that do gardening and they’re usually very nice because they left to share their knowledge and they love to share their bounty. Yeah. So anyway. There’s all different types of roses. The ones you go in your backyard or different than the ones you can buy in a store or have delivered to your table or your desk. It’s just fun.
Alice: What are some of the names of the roses? That’s been really fun. I like to make up names because my mom will say, “What is this rose?” Then I’ll make up the name of the rose-like snakes root on a rooftop.
Kathy: Okay. Good question, Alice. I have definitely gone from my three rose species in the last three years. Alan gave me some roses and that I put in the ground and I learned from my rose society that you put little signs next to roses so you can remember what they are and I do quiz when I make cuttings a bouquet of. I will focus each of my daughters and my husband as to what the names of the roses are. It helps me to remember too. Let’s see. I’ve got a Neil Diamond. I’ve got Scarlett. I’ve got Barbara Streisand. Passion, falling in love, those are pink. I like pink.
One of my roses I got for free, because either maybe someone was moving. Because I joined this rose society and they put out a post and said, “I’m moving, if you want to come dig up my roses.” I got secret because I went to dig it out. That’s why I said, if you can join a group and find people there, they’re willing to share. You don’t have to buy them all.
Alice: I think my favorite ones that you have are mustard. What is it?
Kathy: Ketchup and mustard.
Alice: Yes.
Kathy: Cause that one you said…
Alice: Cause that one has red and yellow.
Kathy: Red and yellow.
Alice: Or the one that’s like butter and what that’s that?
Kathy: That still a child and so it’s a light yellow just like butter.
Alice: Yeah. So I think that’s so funny and so I like to make up the names like Tangerine in the Moonlight or…
Kathy: That one is Brandi.
Alice: Brandi. Yeah. I think one of my favorite stories that you have that you would like tell us when we went to bed was the one about your time in the girl scouts? Can you can you share that story mom?
Kathy: Which story?
Alice: The one about the snake.
Kathy: I knew you were going to ask that one. Okay. It was 1980, and I think I worked on a waterfront at this Girl Scout camp. I think 58 days straight, so imagine a summer. It’s an entire summer living in a camp, it was over a hundred degrees. So it’s super hot. So at night that what would happen is that snakes would come down to cool off on the rocks, or they can get into the latrines where the girls have to go the bathroom, or on the path walking to the latrines.
So the ranger for our camp and our camp director suggested that the waterfront because we lived in a separate location by the pool intense. We didn’t have any responsibility of campers that we would go out at night and hunt for the snakes in the campgrounds to keep away from children who the campers. I don’t know why, but it’s a hundred degrees plus a ten, there’s nothing else to do at night. So we took this as a badge of honor and we made snake sticks, which were limbs from the trees. So we cut them into the bottom, so it was a long limb and then you had like the fork right where the two branches came together. Cut it there and then I peeled off the bark and then you could pin the snake. It was a copperhead. I don’t know if I said the copperhead.
Alice: Yeah.
Kathy: Yeah. So that’s why we had to get rid of them. I don’t know what to do with him now. Maybe not hunt snakes anymore, I don’t know but anyway. Anyways, so you pin the snake behind the head, but I never chopped off ahead. I just pin them. I was the number one pinner for the snake pinner for the Girl Scout camp, and that’s summer.
Alice: Oh! The story goes bump.
Kathy: It’s still on the wall somewhere for the most fence. I don’t know, I have no idea any. An interesting fact is that, we would take the girls that worked in the kitchen. The young they were like 14, 15 years old with us and they would carry the bucket and the axe. So they have to do the dirty work and then the snakes would go back to the kitchen. There’s dead snakes and then they cook.
Supposedly, she pinned them and would put the skin out on stuck on a box and pin it. So it can dry in the sun and then you could put the skin around your head. Well, the rumor was, don’t eat the meat because you don’t know if you’re getting snake or not. Since the cook was in charge of all of that.
Alice: I love that story. It’s just so absurd.
Kathy: It is. I mean, I was 20. When I do that now? No.
Alice: What do you make a 14-year old child?
Kathy: It’s a way to tell a poisonous snake is, the poisonous snakes have a triangle type pad. If you look for a poisonous snake, where it’s like the good garden snakes, snakes from your garden or are just long and thin, just all one way. So you know for the summer if it gets really hot and you see a snake.
Alice: Terrifying. Can you tell me what’s bringing you joy? What brings you joy?
Kathy: Of course, you Alice. All of you girls, my daughters, and my husband, and of course, my health family, especially during the pandemic, all friends, I make a lot of friends. On a business side, double it because we are definitely making a difference in so many women’s lives, so I enjoy that I get emails especially when I open them in the morning. Some aren’t happy, didn’t work for everybody but we do read a lot that are happy. So in the professional side, it’s good to know that you’re making a difference in people’s lives as well. So I guess some work and my family, that’s what makes me brings me joy.
Alice: Great. Tell me a story about your favorite travel experience.
Kathy: Oh! I have been very lucky to travel a lot of different places, so it’s hard– I think it’s kind of like my flowers. It’s hard to say which one is my exact favorite because they’re all different and they’re all different in each point in your life.
I would say a couple of them if I can, Kyoto. I traveled there with your dad, because he was working in Tokyo. I got to go and tag along as on a business trip. Then we went to Kyoto on a train and it was just really special because I think I was probably in my 40s and you girls were young, and so is like one of the first times we got away without you all, since you were little and my mom came to stay with you. It’s just a really magical place. We rode bicycles and along the path of philosophy, which is where all the temples are. It was like getting lost on this magical place, that’s not like getting where else find ever been in the world. With my husband, so it’s really special.
Then, probably a family trip would be Machu Picchu. Because I never dreamed in my life that I would go there first of all and then we walk, we hiked the Inca Trail. It’s just incredible. The beauty of that land, that people, they’re just so nice. Yeah. I cried when we made it through the sun gate, which is where you go, you crawled. I basically crawled up the steps, everyone else I think could walk up, but by that time I was just like they’re crawling. The steps as I recall there really, really steep and we got to the very top and then you go through this gate and you can see Machu Picchu. So I remember that I cried there. It was very magical.
Alice: It was magical. That was just amazing.
Kathy: We don’t go on vacations to really rest. I think we go for adventure.
Alice: Yeah. Which I like. You’ve had so many different jobs. Can you tell me about the craziest you had?
Kathy: Oh gosh.
Alice: Maybe a snake spinner, but…
Kathy: That wasn’t really a job that was just volunteer. That was philanthropy. Let’s see. I have worked a lot of crazy jobs like I started working when I was 14, washing dishes at my church. That wouldn’t be the craziest. That was a good way to get extra desserts. I worked at the mall when I was a teenager. So that’s a perfect job. Just like all the teen maybe everybody wants to work in a mall.
I think that probably the funniest job I ever had was that same summer 1980 when I worked at the Girl Scout camp. I didn’t really make very much many of the camp but it was fun. A good way to get a tan, before I went back to college. When I came back I needed to make more money so I had left out four weeks before school started back up. So I had arranged to continue to lifeguarding, working in a grocery store, and then I waitress. So I’d three different jobs going on.
The waitressing job was at a smorgasbord. So if anyone has never been a waitress, I encourage you all to do it at least once in your life because it will change your view on any restaurant. First of all and tell to treat your waiters and wait, wait, wait staff. Anyway. This was a smorgasbord in on Wednesday nights they had all-you-can-eat crab leg night. There were people that would come right when we open the doors at 5 o’clock and they brought their own crackers to break the shell of the crab legs. So we, the wait staff, we called him the crackers. So you would try to bribe you the hostess not to put any cracker in your station because if you got them, they didn’t leave for hours and they would sit there until almost we closed. Eating crab legs because it was all you can eat. Go to the smorgasbord and they go through the buffet, and they’d get their crab legs and they bring them back to the table and we had to put a plastic bucket on the table for them to put the shells into, and then we’d have to empty that. So anyway. It’s like, if you got a cracker in your station, you didn’t get many tips. You didn’t want to have them.
I still, to this day, do not want to open a crab leg. I like crab meat, but I don’t want to see the leg because I don’t want to see the shell.
Alice: Yeah.
Kathy: No. That was crazy.
Alice: Yeah. Now, you have a completely different job now. You found jubilance. This is a family-run business partially because I had the worst PMS and was a horrible human when that would happen with my terrible mood swings. Can you talk a little bit about founding jubilance?
Kathy: Yeah. So I came to it and then a roundabout way I was in pharmaceutical sales after college, and then Alan started a nutritional supplement business, my husband. We have had great success, like five million doses worldwide with oxaloacetate and we market it as benaGene and it’s marketed mostly through three doctors. So we went to a lot of conferences and doctors would come to talk to us like call us on the phone all the time, placing orders, and they use it for their patients. For anti-aging and glucose support.
We started to hear from those physicians and the medical community that they were using it for women that had PMS. Those were sad, or irritable, or anxious, etcetera. In age I found out, I hear them telling me this story or their nurses telling me the stories. Having three daughters, and being a woman and having had PMS growing up and knowing, you know, I said this is something we need to look into to my husband. He’s like, “Yeah, yeah.” Then he being a father of three girls, he really did take him seriously. We decided to put some more words after three doctors, find out what they thought about it. Get a little more feedback from other physicians that weren’t using it. They started using it and so we decided, okay, let’s figure this out and so we invested in a clinical trial. We had women that took that, they call it the gold standard in the business. So it was a double-blind, which means that the person that is receiving the test product. I don’t know if it’s Placebo or if it is the actual product and you might be familiar with this because of the vaccine trials that we’re done for the COVID vaccines. Some people got Placebo and some people got the actual product. So we did that and then we crossed it over. So that meant that if they had the Placebo then they went to the test product. If they had the test product, they went to the Placebo product. So it was a crossover.
Well, the women that and family members said they can figure out. So we knew it might be successful trial because we started, I was the customer service rep. So I’d get phone calls and I didn’t know what they were on, but I got phone calls friend like a spouse. Someone’s mother, partners say, I think she’s on the test product and we don’t want to cross over. She might call me and say I’m going to drop out. If they drop out then that would mean like, his say, he wanted to stay on the product they were on and they were like, we want to just buy it. I said, “No, no, no. I don’t know what you’re on, you need to finish.” So anyway. We did get them to complete the trial and it was back in 2016 too.
So I don’t know if you remember that was back when it was the election and it was Hillary and Trump that no matter what side of the political fence you were on, it was a tough time to be a woman I think, because there was a lot of like just bantering about women and women voting, etcetera, etcetera. That we got a huge significant results or great results. So then we thought, let’s do it again, let’s be sure. So we did it again and the results came back again. Yeah. So it’s very exciting because, I mean, it did make a huge difference in people’s lives and it’s continuing too. That’s why it’s an exciting and that’s what brings me joy you asked me that question earlier that I know that, like I said, it doesn’t work for everyone and 80% of the women it does. For that 20% that it done, I hope you’re watching make a woman or read a jubilee or blog or something ‘cause we’re still here for you.
Alice: Yeah. I think that’s what’s exciting about the company and why I personally wanted to join it was because it’s about helping women and helping others. Opening the conversation of this taboo of menstruation.
Kathy: I never thought this is like what I’d be doing.
Alice: Yeah, where we going to ever talked about this before? In fact I don’t think I’ve ever asked you, what is your first period story?
Kathy: Oh my gosh. Okay. So yeah. Now, I’m work for period companies out of the ton. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I am a child of the 60s and so I probably I could think I had my period when I was 13, so 1973 or 1974. My mom never talked to me about it. I mean, never. Think of your grandma. She gave me a book. It was a little pamphlet. She said, all the Girl Scouts are reading this. A cadet. Sergeant Girl Scout all the way through high school and everything. So anyway. She said all the Girl Scouts are reading this. I’m like, okay. I looked at, I was like rose. I’m not going to read this, I tossed it aside. Then, of course, you get your period, you think you’re dying because you have no idea what’s going on and none of your friend, none of my friends would ever talk about it because no one talked about it, period. He just didn’t talk about it.
Yeah. So then I told my mom and she gave me this huge of pads there. They were like Kotex and they came in a big purple box and they probably seem like 12 inches long and 6 inches high. Horrible and you had to put them on with a belt, you had stick together. Yeah, it was awful.
Alice: That’s horrible. Oh my God.
Kathy: I don’t know why. I think of [inaudible]. If we go back to the Girl Scout camp we actually– these things were so big that we wrapped them around low or limbs and dip them in kerosene and use them as a torch, for campfires. So bad.
Alice: Yeah.
Kathy: With the new products, stay free and you’re so lucky now because, I remember say free came out and had the little adhesive tape, that was a big deal. Then, of course, they did have tampons I think finally when my friends told me about tampons, these horrible huge cardboard applicators. I mean, now you’re period panties and your pops and you have organic tampons and they’ll deliver them right to your door. So no one knows. So it’s like…
Alice: PMS relief, it’s crazy. This is just people talking about it.
Kathy: It’s an open subject.
Alice: Yeah. Which is really just started to happen as an open subject because I didn’t talk about it when I was growing up which I’m 30 years old.
Kathy: I did try to talk to you about it because I didn’t want to be like my mom.
Alice: Yeah, but I got really stressed and wouldn’t want to talk about it. I’m like, stop.
Kathy: I did struck off you.
Alice: Yeah, you did. What is your definition of womanhood?
Kathy: Oh! I know you asked us every week and I just to have a really good answer, but I want to say strong, women are strong. We are strong and we’re strong independently and we’re stronger when we’re together. When we all work together, be friends, and help each other out. It’s been a tough year. I think women are strong so that would be my definition. Stay strong.
Alice: That’s great. Mom, do you have any tips or tricks for our listeners just finishing off?
Kathy: Well, first I want to say, Happy Mother’s Day to everybody. You may not be a mother but your sister, or obviously have a mother, or maybe you have an aunt, or someone that you or neighbor that you care about, I think as women that we all just reach out to each other. Stay caring and loving to one another and then shuffle prune. What that means is, in my garden, if a plant is doing well and I tried, get rid of it. Throw it away, start over. That’s for the garden. Now in life, you can’t really do that but you can try. I mean, I know it’s hard out there and but if you’re not happy with your job, maybe you can take a class that would make you happy, that could maybe get you the job you want, or if you can’t change careers, volunteer somewhere, or reach out to a neighbor. Do something that makes you feel good and that could do good in your community.
Alice: Yay! Thank you so much, mom.
Kathy: You’re welcome. That was fun.
