For Women Who Are Unapologetically Ambitious and Fiercely Informed

Everyone has an opinion on what supplements women need. Your doctor. Your Instagram feed. That wellness influencer with no degree. Take this one for your hormones. That one for your brain. This one for perimenopause. That one for after. The trial and error alone costs a fortune and half the time I can't even remember to take them. With ADHD on top of it, the idea of managing 18 different bottles, each with its own schedule, was already a losing battle before I even started. Then Biologica landed in my hands. Every vitamin and mineral your body actually needs — except Omega 3s because they taste like fish and fiber because you can't put it in a dissolvable powder or it doesn't work. Oh and it has electrolytes, all in one powder and it doesn't smell or taste like dirt. In fact, it tastes amazing. So 17 fewer things for you all to worry about doing. You're welcome. Listen to the latest episode of Takin’ Care of Lady Business featuring the founder of Biologica, Liz Willinger.

With Love & Lady Business,
JJ

PS. Fun fact, if you click on the ad above, you help this newsletter grow and scale. 😉  

In today’s edition:
1. One Powder. 18 Supplements. Made for Every Stage.
2. You Don’t Need the Credentials. You Need the Conviction.
3. Client Spotlight: Kate Schelter
4. Lady Bits is Back

1. One Powder. 18 Supplements. Made for Every Stage

“Taking care of your health shouldn’t be this hard.”

Liz Zwillinger had no science degree. No lab background. No formal training in nutrition, product development, or supplement formulation. What she had was a law degree, a front-row seat to her husband building Allbirds from scratch, and a pantry full of things that weren't working. That turned out to be enough.

When Liz decided to build Biologica, she did what any good lawyer does — she asked better questions than everyone else. Why was no one formulating supplements specifically for women's hormonal life stages? Why was every product built for some imaginary average woman who doesn't exist? Why did fixing your health have to cost a fortune in trial and error and still leave you guessing?

The answers she found led her to build three distinct formulas — one for pre-perimenopause, one for perimenopause, one for menopause — because the nutritional needs of a woman's body don't stay static and the supplements she takes shouldn't either. No science degree required. Just the audacity to ask why no one had done it yet, and the conviction to build it herself.

In this episode we got into:
- Why most supplements pass right through you — and what bioavailability actually means for your wallet and your health
- How women’s nutritional needs change at every hormonal stage and why one-size-fits-all was never going to work
- What it actually takes to build a company from scratch when the product you needed didn’t exist
- The biggest ask Liz ever made — and why it changed everything

👉Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Try Biologica for yourself — use the code for your phase:
Pre-Perimenopause: https://go.shopmy.us/p-54603980
Perimenopause: https://go.shopmy.us/p-54603530
Menopause: https://go.shopmy.us/p-54603956

2. You Don’t Need the Credentials. You Need the Conviction.

Liz Zwillinger had no science degree. No product development background. No roadmap for building a supplement company. What she had was personal experience — years of standing in her own pantry, trying to figure out what her body needed at each hormonal stage, spending a fortune on products that were never designed with her in mind. That personal experience turned out to be worth more than any credential.

Here’s what I know about stepping outside your comfort zone: the version of you that waits until she’s qualified never goes. She just keeps waiting. For the right moment. The right advice. The right person to tell her she’s ready. And then one day the window closes and you realize — you were never waiting for the right time. You were waiting for permission that was never going to come.

I know this because I lived it. I wanted to become a mother. I kept waiting for the right relationship, the right moment, the right plan. And one day I realized — it was now or never. Mother Nature can be a bitch like that. I stopped waiting and I became a single mother by choice. No permission. No perfect circumstances. Just a decision.

I launched The Justice Dept. the same way. Started this podcast the same way. None of it came with a manual. All of it required me to trust that what I had lived through was qualification enough. Liz did the same thing. She didn’t have the degree. But she had spent years in that pantry. She knew the problem because she was living it. And she trusted that knowing a problem deeply — really deeply, personally, frustratingly — was enough to start building the solution.

Real talk:  only 69% of early-career women say they want a promotion versus 80% of their male peers. But when will women receive the same support and opportunities? That gap disappears entirely. The problem was never our ambition. It’s what we’ve been told about how much we’re allowed to want — and how long we have to wait before we deserve it. Read the McKinsey Women in the Workplace report

Don’t wait for the perfect time. Don’t wait for the right person. Don’t wait for permission. You don’t need the degree. You need the conviction.
👉Ready to stop waiting? Work with The Justice Dept.

3. Client Spotlight: Kate Schelter

Kate Schelter is a watercolor artist and illustrator whose work has appeared at Bergdorf Goodman, the St. Regis, Veronica Beard, and Anthropologie. Last week, she was part of an exhibition at Misela’s new Bond Street boutique in NoHo — a collaboration with Demet Müftüoğlu Eşeli, curator, creative director, and co-founder of ISTANBUL’74, the multidisciplinary arts and culture platform based in Istanbul and New York that has worked with Gagosian, Lehmann Maupin, and Hauser and Wirth. Two cities. Two creative women. A real exhibition.

What makes Kate’s work special is what she chooses to paint. The things we reach for every single day without thinking — a Bar Pitti matchbook, a red stiletto, a Diet Coke. The objects that are somehow both completely ordinary and completely iconic. She makes you look at your own life and see the beauty in it. That is a rare thing.

The result of the Misela collaboration is a full NYC-Istanbul Icons collection now available on her website — and if you know Kate’s world at all, you already want to see it.

👉See Kate’s work — including the NYC-Istanbul Icons collection — at kateschelter.com
👉Ready to ask for what you deserve? Work with The Justice Dept.

Lady Bits

🐎 Cherie DeVaux just became the first female trainer to win the Kentucky Derby in 152 years of racing — THIS PAST WEEKEND. Her horse Golden Tempo went from dead last to first at 23-1 odds. After the win she said: “I’m glad I can be a representative of women everywhere.” Don’t tell me the window is closed. Read the full story

📚 Selfish: Unlearning, Reclaiming, and Telling the Truth by Kerry Docherty. Co-founder of Faherty brand, Yale graduate, mother of two, TJD client — and a woman who finally decided to stop giving herself away. A memoir about putting yourself first and how doing so can actually be a gift to everyone around you. Brutally honest and exactly what we need right now. Get the book

📊 Only 5% of total healthcare R&D funding goes toward women’s health. Five percent. Meanwhile, the women’s health market is projected to hit $600 billion by 2030. Imagine what happens when we actually try. Read the PwC report

🎵 Rozzi releases her long-awaited album, Fig Tree this week, May 8th. You may have seen her here and can see her in LA here 

🏅Kirsty Coventry just became the first woman — and first African — elected President of the International Olympic Committee in its 131-year history. She is 42. She didn’t wait either.

Hi, I’m JJ

Since starting the Justice Dept, we have increased women's wealth by over $100MM in just over 5 years. Want to know what inspires me to do this work, other than making women money? My clients' surprised reaction when we manage to get them much better terms for themselves and their companies, whether via talent agreements, employment, severance, partnerships, asset sales or investments. They often admit that they never thought they could get that result. Not even hoped. This blows my mind. As we know at The Justice Dept. you are all worth everything you ask for and more. Reach out and we’ll show you how!
x TJD