Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Broderick.
Hi Megan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born and raised in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Collegiate soccer brought me south to play for CofC. School always came relatively easy for me, so I managed to graduate in 3.5 years and spent my last “semester” of college and that summer working in food & bev while looking for a professional job. Despite my love for Charleston, job opportunities were seriously lacking back when I graduated, so I begrudgingly moved back to Chicago at the end of summer for a great job in the wine and spirits industry. While I loved my job and living in the city, I found myself longing to be in Charleston and would visit every few months, catching a flight out on Friday afternoon and booking the red-eye home on Sunday. But, I always ended up intentionally missing that flight and flying home at 6 AM Monday morning. I would head straight to work from the plane in my Friday work outfit, just to squeeze in every last second in Charleston.
Fast-forward a few years to a Friday morning in late September. I walked into my weekly day in the office and looked around this room full of my colleagues at varying stages of success and their careers, all a couple of decades ahead of me and all incredibly unhappy. At that moment, I realized this is not what I want for my life. I gave my notice the very next week with no plan, only a desire to find what made me happy. I decided that if I was going to blow up my life as I knew it, leaving a very financially successful career, family, and friends, I was really going to get uncomfortable. What better way to do that than to move to a country where I didn’t know anyone, the language, or have any of the creature comforts of home? I landed in South Korea less than 2 months after leaving my job. I touched down in the land of the morning calm in December 2009 to teach English to elementary school children.
While teaching was not the thing that fed my soul, I learned what did: travel, human connection, and shared experiences. For the next decade, I spent my life traveling, living, and working primarily abroad, but somehow always found my way back to my adopted “home”, Charleston.
For the past 5 years, my husband and I have been lucky enough to spend 6 months of the year living and working in New Zealand and then 6 months of the year here in Charleston while working remotely for my New Zealand employer; but, all of that came crashing to a halt in late 2020 as we found ourselves stuck outside of New Zealand. This was a bit of serendipity that allowed me the incredibly unique and special opportunity to come on board with my sister as a Co-Founder of a|dash, an idea she pitched to me during a visit to New Zealand in January 2020. After helping launch the business at our Nashville headquarters in early 2021, my husband and I returned to Charleston to put down more permanent roots.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Anyone who has started a business, in particular a beverage or CPG business, knows a few things:
1) It is EXPENSIVE and always costs more than you think
2) Something always goes wrong and you spend a lot of your time putting out fires.
We have faced a number of obstacles along the way from finding a co-manufacturer for our product to supply chain issues to damaged product, but far and away the biggest challenge we face on a daily basis is capital. As a bootstrapped business that pays all of our bills in advance, sometimes months before we receive the inventory, we are constantly faced with tough decisions on what can we afford to do today and what opportunities to grow the business we have to miss out on until we can sell through some inventory to recoup the upfront investment.
Another challenge for me personally is work-life balance. I still work full-time remotely on New Zealand business hours in addition to full-time + on a|dash during the day, late nights after NZ business hours, and on weekends, so it can be difficult to manage. But, I know what we are doing with a|dash is going to make a positive impact on so many people not just in our local communities, but across the entire US, that I truly believe the challenges will all be worth it for me to help others.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am the Co-Founder and Director of Operations for a|dash. a|dash is a functional wellness CPG company at our core that believes that beverage and food is the most convenient and accessible manner to help everyone incorporate adaptogens into their daily wellness routine. Adaptogens are super herbs and mushrooms that adapt their function to help your body manage stress and return to its natural state of balance or homeostasis. They quite literally saved my sister’s life after she silently struggled with severe postpartum anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts that were brought on in part by extreme hormonal imbalance. Once I understood the magic of adaptogens, I knew I had found my true calling in my work-life balance. I dove headfirst into creating a company with my sister that is mission and community-driven.
We aim to simply wellness routines, by upgrading daily rituals through functional beverage and food. Our first product to launch is our lower-caffeine, organic cold brew coffee infused with a daily “dash” of Ashwagandha (Indian Ginseng).
We have already finalized our second cold brew product, a mushroom coffee. We have big plans to launch other functional products like ground coffee with Ashwagandha + cacao to brew your own functional coffee at home, and some food items.
My goal is to continue to create products that people can seamlessly incorporate into their daily wellness routine through a more elevated version, like our flagship cold brew coffee, rather than forcing them to change or add an additional step to their day. My aim is to use human connections created through our products to find shared experiences. This will allow me to foster an a|dash community that lifts others around them up which will help our larger community become more educated and empowered to take charge of their own health and wellness. I want people, and in particular moms, to know that they are not alone in their struggles and that it is not okay to be dismissed by your doctor. I want them to feel comfortable sharing their mental and physical challenges and then finding a shared experience from someone else who is or has been in that same place.
What sets a|dash apart from every other functional coffee on the market is our authentic reason for creating the company; our honest and transparent approach to clean ingredients to educate and empower our consumers; but most importantly is our desire to build much more than a product, our desire to build a community that makes our broader communities better place to live.
What does success mean to you?
For me, success is difficult to define. I grew up as an overachieving perfectionist and still have some of those tendencies, despite working hard to overcome them. There are some moments when I feel like I am not achieving enough that I have to take myself back to that moment I walked into the office that Friday morning in September 2009 when I decided that was not the life I wanted, regardless of the financial success I was achieving. When I put myself back in that place, I am able to reframe my true definition of success: to be truly happy, healthy, deeply connected to those around me, grateful, and making time each day for myself in nature.
Contact Info:
- Email: megan@drinkadash.com
- Website: https://drinkadash.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinkadash/ OR Personal: https://www.instagram.com/thenuamericandreamers/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drinkadash/
Image Credits
Kailey Jean Creative
Solas Photography
