I’d love to tell you more about my journey from me, to The Inspired Little Pot, and back to me again…
Well, as of 17th Feb, 2021 I am officially operating under my very own name – Krissy Ballinger. Yahoo, it feel so right! Let’s rewind to my beginnings though…
It began with a few simple recipes and a cute little brand name: The Inspired Little Pot. I wanted more control over the number of chemicals entering our home, and ultimately our bodies. I was happy with how these recipes performed compared to their toxic counterparts so I shared some of my creations with friends, and it was so well received, I thought I’d start sharing on a little Facebook page, basically to reach a few more people – friends of friends. Well, this little page grew quite quickly – it seemed it wasn’t just me concerned with toxins. #winning
Because I started a Facebook page and not a group, I couldn’t load documents for people to easily search for recipes, and I got too busy to copy and paste these recipes into comments, so I decided to start a free WordPress site. That was great!
I then ran my first Chemical Awareness workshop for a small group of people in Perth (eventually I went on to run 25+ across Australia, meeting around 1000 people). But I quickly realised that I could teach people to make natural recipes all I wanted, but unless I could help them access truly natural ingredients, it wasn’t that helpful.
Then came the new website.
I started stocking a few ingredients like washing soda, bicarb, salt and borax, back in early 2016. I then got in shea butter, beeswax and coconut oil. It was hard to draw the line! I kept creating recipes and needing to stock the ingredients I was using.
Fast forward 3 years and I was stocking 60 different product lines. For a long time, I did it ALL myself. I expanded to my entire home office, then I claimed part of our garage, and then the theatre room was converted to a workspace.
Thousands of orders were packed and despatched by my two hands. Then it got to the point where I realised I couldn’t sustain that level of man-hours without destroying myself. So I got help: a few beautiful mum-friends, in between jobs, put in a few hours here and there, and then, I employed 2 extra super-humans that packed ingredients and shipped orders for me. These precious souls, Carron and Jenita, worked with me and TILP for 18 months until I made the massive decision to focus solely on education and book writing, meaning the end to the warehouse and supply side of the business.
It was a HUGE decision, but it was the right one for me, and for you! I now share my supplier info with everyone, meaning you can benefit from bulk ingredients from the very best suppliers in Australia! Check it out here.
The best decision I made was concentrating my focus.
Now, I am spend my days creating useful content for you: recipes, blogs, videos and courses; I am making an effort to be more present on my social media platforms; I travel more, I do more zoom interviews, I’m popping up on tv (thanks, Channel 10) and podcasts (thanks, ABC), in newspapers (thanks, Herald Sun and The West Australian), and at local libraries and stores, with my eco-friendly earth-loving socks pulled up high!
So there you go – my journey laid out in nutshell for you. I promise you some amazing things over the coming months, so keep your eyes peeled!
Edit – June 2022: I am currently taking a break from this space. The natural DIY/sustainable/eco cause will always be one I advocate for, so I won’t be resting on that front. You can read more here.
