I came into this with a resilience, so I'm good against the wind

Jytte will make health easy and accessible to everyone. That's why she chose to say goodbye to her previous career as a real estate agent in the business industry to dedicate herself to the mission. 10 years later, she now stands with the dietary supplement she dreamed of creating.

There is a special T-shirt in Jytte Bille's closet. On the stomach it says "winners never quit, quitters never win". It has been in the closet for several years because Jytte has been waiting for just the right occasion to wear it. The day she felt she had achieved her dream. And that day is now.

Since Jytte said goodbye to her company in the property industry 10 years ago to live out her dream of developing a nutritional supplement, she has worked step by step towards a product which has now ended up exactly as she dreamed of. The dietary supplement STAI is a powder that contains 28 nutrients in a combination of vitamins, minerals, proteins, Omega-3 fatty acids, collagen and turmeric. An all-in-one product that is mixed with water and taken as a supplement to the nutrients that are in 600 grams of fruit and vegetables per day, as the official recommendations say.

There are just a lot of people who don't manage to eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables daily, and therefore some easy solutions are needed. I noticed that more people got stressed and more people became overweight, and that's what happens when you're busy. You choose the easy and often unhealthy solutions, and it is yourself and your health that are prioritized last. That's why I started diving into this very thing. Why wasn't there a supplement where you got all the good nutrients at once, so it was a little easier to live more healthily? asks Jytte, whose first thought was to find such a product abroad for which she could start an agency. It just didn't exist, so she decided to make it herself. The first step was to ally with a number of professionals. A biochemist, a molecular biologist, a doctor and a number of dieticians.

Everyone thought it sounded very exciting, but at the same time they pulled the smiley face a little. I couldn't find anyone who would throw money into it, but I could tell so clearly that I needed this, so I put the money I had previously made in the real estate business into it. I couldn't help it at all, and that's how you have to be if you're going to create something yourself. It can't be the money that drives you. You have to be driven by a purpose, otherwise you lose your spirit because it is so hard and there are so many frustrations along the way, says Jytte.

Stands well in headwinds

Jytte's previous working life was in the real estate industry, where she ran her own brokerage firm for more than 20 years. Along the way, she became the first woman to chair the Danish Construction Society, an interest organization for the construction and property industry. But when the market crashed back in 2007, Jytte started to feel like taking new paths. And since at the same time she has always had a foot in the health world in the form of previous training as a gymnastics instructor and nutritionist, and with voluntary teaching in gymnastics associations for the past 25, it was only natural that it was the industry that called her.

The crash back in 2007 was a kind of wakeup call for me, and I could feel that I had had enough of being in the capital business. I was at a place in life where I could choose to take early retirement, but I wasn't there at all. I think I had something important to offer, and some qualities and some experience that could be used to solve a problem in people's busy lives.

At 72 years old, Jytte has a long working life behind her, and it is precisely her experiences that have played a role in her entrepreneurial journey.

Firstly, it has been a great advantage that I have tried to build a company in the past. I came into this with a resilience, so I'm good against the wind. Secondly, I have learned to keep my nose in the lane. I have learned to persevere and persevere and that resistance does not have to equal unhappiness. Often people think that when resistance hits, all is lost. It is not like that. Resistance is an expression that something needs to be adjusted and then you can try again. As an entrepreneur, it's easy to take opposition personally, but you have to separate your person from your product, because if you take everything personally, you can end up with depression, says Jytte.

And Jytte has had to adjust many things along the way. The shape of the packaging, the size of the portions, the taste of the powder and a wide range of requirements set out by the Danish Food and Drug Administration in relation to communication of the product. In addition, finding a manufacturer that could keep up with the demand was needed. Jytte started with a small family business in Slovenia, but has recently brought a large Swedish factory on board that can deliver in larger quantities.

 We have a much better starting point now than when we started. It has also just taken 10 years, but I can feel that I am at the finish line, and I am really looking forward to now opening up all channels, says Jytte, who is going through her network to see which contacts , who can help her in the phase that now awaits, when she really needs to get the sales going.

Will avoid health stress

Along the way, Jytte's age has also given rise to a number of funny experiences. Like when she booked a desk in an office community for entrepreneurs with a slightly younger number on their birth certificate, who therefore thought she must have gone wrong. Or when she had meetings with the agency that built her website and she didn't understand half the words and terms they were throwing around.

One day I brought my knitting clothes and a knitting pattern and put them on the table, and they didn't understand one bit of it. Then I had to explain that this was how their explanations about the website sounded to me. They laughed a lot about that, and then we found a common language. And the time in the office community was really educational for me, because I entered a new era and learned how the language had developed within entrepreneurship, and many of the young people, I still see, says Jytte, who only praises her 72 years.

If I do say so myself, being my age is a huge advantage. At an event in Jutland, I met a young woman of 22 who thinks I was so inspiring, while a young man I met wanted to give his mother a subscription because she was younger than me, but he felt that I had more energy. At the same time, no one can come and tell me that all the things I claim about health are wrong, because I have tried it all myself. I've had young children, I've worked a lot, and I've gone through menopause, so I know what I'm talking about. So in relation to my product, it is in every way an advantage that I am older.

The many years on the labor market have also taught Jytte another important thing. That she should take care of herself. The vast majority of her waking thoughts concentrate on the company, and if she is not aware of the opposite, she fills all pages of the calendar with appointments related to STAI.

You need to pause. Let go of it all and come down into the body. I've also worked 16 hours and slept six when my kids were little, but that's a bad idea. It wasn't something I thought about at the time, but it's something I want to give back now. That we can't live in the fast lane all the time, because then the body burns out, says Jytte, who especially uses her training to relax.

When I work out, I pull the plug and clear my head. When the week is over, I want to have gone through cardio training, strength training and meditative stretches in the evening. And then I must have breathed all the way down into my stomach. It may well be that in between it will only be 10 minutes here and there, but it is better than nothing, because it regulates the body mentally immediately.

She hopes that with STAI she can help prevent health from becoming a stress factor, which she believes it is developing into.

There is so much focus on health today that I think it confuses people. If we are not careful, people develop health stress because they are under too much pressure in relation to everything they are told they should achieve. When I started teaching in the 80's we had cardio, strength training, yoga, breathing and coffee and cake and we did it all in 90 minutes. Today you have to go to an hour of one, two and three for it to be good enough, instead of remembering that 10 minutes on the days when you can't get more done makes a difference too, says Jytte.

STAI v/Jytte Bille, Lifestyle guide