In this interview, I chat with Jacinda Yee, owner of 2 food businesses – The Breakfast Club and Journey to Glow. I first met Jacinda when my best friend brought me to The Breakfast Club for a birthday treat. As Jacinda served us some natural herbal tea grown from her dad’s garden, it struck me that she truly embraced all things natural and had such a passion for the food she was serving us. We enjoyed our kaiseki lunch and explored the unique ingredients – I was amazed at how beautifully presented our vegan meal was, and how much care had gone into each dish.
I was immediately inspired to interview Jacinda, who told us her stories about the food she cooked and her health journey. I also wanted to take her through her astrology birth chart so that we could see how and what motivates Jacinda as well.
Read on below for the interview:
Tonya: Which business started first? Did The Breakfast Club start or did Journey to Glow start first?
Jacinda: Well, The Breakfast Club started first, but we started off with the meal subscriptions. I started this business because I used to have a lot of health problems such as acne, eczema, UTI. I was always sick and had the flu and fever. Every month it would come back and I would be bedridden for a week. I even had alopecia and hives. Sometimes I got these illnesses all at once, and back then I was on medication. One day the medication just stopped working. My doctor then told me that he didn’t know how to help me because he had already given me the strongest medications.
I was so sad and helpless at the time. But at the same time, this was a turning point in my life because I decided that if the doctors cannot help me, I will help myself.
So I started researching and came across a guy who used food to heal himself. He experimented on himself and his community. And basically it’s very simple. It’s going back to basics for 30 days. Just whole foods like fruits and vegetables. Cut out the processed food and refined carbohydrates for just 30 days and go back into a reset or detox.
Tonya: What was the name of this guy?
Jacinda: His name is Markus Rothkranz. He is from the US and he had a free ebook called Heal Yourself 101 which I downloaded. The more I read the book, the more I thought to myself, wow, this guy makes so much sense. And you know, and he’s not trying to sell you some kind of like million dollar miracle. It was seriously so simple – just eat your veggies <laugh>,
At the end of the 30 days, everything healed, and I was like, wow, this is my mission – I need to tell everybody about this! I know many people have chronic illnesses and they’ve been taking medication their whole life and it didn’t help them at all.
I told my family first and faced rejection, mainly because they were not ready to make that change. But other friends and family who saw this change were ready to heal from their issues. So I shared with the method. It was no secret – it’s going back to basics, fruits and vegetables. So I had to explain to them to replace certain things in their kitchen – salts, oils, etc. They found it too complicated and asked if I could prepare the meals for them every day instead.
Tonya: Did you actually like cooking before that?
Jacinda: No, I never cooked!
Tonya: Never cooked. Wow. It’s as if your whole life just changed 180 degrees.
Jacinda: It really turned around. This was a newfound discovery for me because I’ve lived my whole life up to that point, even since as a child, making my decisions based on what society thinks is the right way. Even when I pursued my university degree, I really didn’t want a degree. It didn’t make any sense to me, but everybody said, you must get a degree to get a good job. When it came to deciding on the degree, I just called my friends, and since they said marketing was good, I signed up.
I didn’t know what job to do. I kept on hearing others around me say that if I did what I really liked to do, I would never earn good money. When I found food, it really gave me so much mental clarity. I discovered that I can listen to myself for what’s best for me.
Tonya: What were you doing prior to or when you got your illnesses?
Jacinda: I was a freelance emcee. I really enjoyed it because I like to interact with people.
Tonya: You have your Sun in Gemini, and Geminis are very communicative – they like to connect with people, to have conversations. There’s a lot of fun going on and there’s a lot mental activity as well. For you, your mental activity is very fast.
Jacinda: Super fast!
Tonya: As a person who started working after you graduated from university, and when you were emcee, was it already freelance?
Jacinda: No, that was very much later in life. When I first graduated, I had office jobs. I first took a job that my cousin recommended and my family tried to convince me that the money is really good, but I just could not work as something that I don’t like for the money, it’s just not enough for me. At that time, I think it seemed stupid to many people. I guess I felt more restricted and couldn’t express myself more freely. Eventually I just quit and I started taking on freelance tuition for primary school.
Tonya: When we look at a natal or birth chart, there are three main things we look at. Firstly, the 12 areas of your life, each of them represented by the slices of the wheel on your chart. Secondly, there are planets. At the precise time of your birth, this is where all the planets were placed. So if you were to look up one sky, that’s what you see. Each one of these symbols in the chart represents a planet. And then each planet is in a different constellation. For example, Sagittarius or Capricorn or Gemini, where the Sun was when you were born.
You have quite a few resources in your 3rd house. What I mean by resources is the planets have an influence on your 3rd house. The 3rd house is about research, data, early education, communication, siblings and short journeys. So from here, I can tell that there’s already quite a lot of emphasis that you have on communications, on speaking, on things that are social, social media. Which ties in with why you like speaking and also emcee-ing. The first planet in your 3rd house is called Uranus. This is the planet which has a humanitarian streak. The way in which you’re going to use this is really to get people to learn and explore. Because it’s in the sign of Sagittarius. It’s not about learning just one topic. It’s very broad-minded, and it likes to learn about A, B, C, D and explore these various things. Unlike what you learn from textbooks, it’s really about experiencing something and experimenting. And the Uranus part of you says, what can we do to help the world? What can we do to save the world? Uranus is also a rebel – doesn’t like to follow convention at all.
Jacinda: Wow. I really enjoyed teaching them (my students), especially outside of the curriculum. I would share with them environmental issues and how we can improve it. During the lessons, sometimes I would stray a little bit but I could see that they really enjoyed it too and they can remember such information as compared to just textbook learning.
Tonya: Moving on, your 6th house describes the things that you do on a daily basis. It can actually describe the work that you do. It is in the sign of Pisces and it is ruled by the planet Neptune. What you can do well is to provide people with inspiration based on the research that you have done. Since your Neptune is in house number 3, it’s taking in all the data and the research that you’ve done and providing them with what is the ideal situation here. But the manner in which you are contributing is still has a very down to earth feeling to it. It can be about setting goals. It’s about being very practical and saying, okay, how can I reach this stage step by step? How can I do it in a way that it makes sense? It’s not flighty or fluffy.
Jacinda: Yeah. A hundred percent.
Tonya: Can you elaborate? What does that mean for you?
Jacinda: Well sometimes I think my imagination is so crazy, but yet to me, my ideal world is also so doable. <Laugh> My ideal vision is to set up an eco village where everybody lives more sustainably. We grow our own produce, it’s community living where everybody shares resources. I always tell people we are relying too heavily on one system, which is money. And what happens in nature is that if you rely too heavily on one thing, when that crashes, everybody dies. So I do acknowledge that yes, money is important, but we’re just too heavily dependent on it.
I’ve been hearing that the economy is going into recession. People tend to panic and say that if there is no money, there is no food to eat. But this does not make sense to me at all. I feel that we all have to start growing our own food and be more self-sustainable. You can still feed yourself at a very basic level even if you don’t have the money. And I feel like it’s super possible. Small steps, like learning how to grow things, learning how to use this simple produce to cook them into delicious food and like trying to live more sustainably and using more like less plastic and use more nature given materials.
But it’s not easy to be an early adopter because people tend to be skeptical because they cannot see it. I have learned to share my dream, and also learned how to face rejection. I do not take it personally when I face skeptics.
Tonya: Yeah, absolutely. That’s really very wise. When you were working jobs and then doing freelancing here and there, was there ever this sense that, “Oh, I’m an entrepreneur – It’s scary!”
Jacinda: No, never. I’m actually very bad with money. <Laugh>. I never needed a monthly salary for security. I’ve accepted the ups and downs of my earnings as a freelancer. I have depended a lot on my family and adapted my life – if I don’t have money today, I stay at home, I don’t go out. It’s a sense of like, if I have no money, I don’t worry too much because I know that the Universe will provide. (a lot of times it means my family will provide) <laughs>
Tonya: <Laugh>. Do you have a big family?
Jacinda: I have 3 siblings, my parents and a grandmother. We all used to live together in one house. And, we were very close to all my aunties and cousins. From young, even though my family was not well to do, my other relatives who had more would always shower us with a lot of things. So that’s where my…
Tonya: … Concept of abundance comes from?
Jacinda: Totally – yes.
Tonya: That’s amazing. It’s like you grew up with a whole ‘kampong’, right? The whole village.
Jacinda: Maybe this is why I want to replicate this in future. I feel that it’s so important – how can you rely only yourself for everything?
Tonya: So does this feel like your calling right now for you, this whole the food business, the health business? Is there anything more or, or are you really happy with where you are now?
Jacinda: What I’m coming to realize is that because I’m a Manifestor (Human Design type), I know that I cannot work on the same thing for a long time. I definitely I want to pass the business on – I already have a team and I’m trying to inspire more people so that they feel that their work is very meaningful.
I started this business not solely to cook for people. It was always about raising awareness. This is just a starting point to raise awareness but I never thought that my clients would have to rely on me forever. And so being able to do more public speaking or write a book, that would be my next mission.
I like to share about all these things I’ve learnt because I know that there are so many people who are not aware. And how I learned all these things was from somebody else’s sharing. I feel the need to pass it on.
Tonya: Is there a part of you that values transformations? Or is there a part of you that loves to go deep beyond the surface, perhaps even exploring very dark topics? There could be things that society doesn’t accept. Or maybe there could be a lot of psychology behind it. What’s your take on that?
Jacinda: Yes, <laugh> very deep. That’s my thing. I just feel like it’s great for everyone to have more awareness about how we feel about certain issues. Because I feel like we have been running on autopilot for a really, really long time. If I can activate you by asking you a really deep question and you can start to think about it, then like I feel like I’ve done my work.
Tonya: That part shows up in your chart this way, how you’ve just described it. The 2nd house is about money and self-worth. It’s also about values and your attitudes towards money. Your 2nd house is in the sign of Scorpio. And Scorpio is ruled by planet Pluto. Pluto in Scorpio. Pluto likes to go deep. It likes to go into dark topics. There is death and rebirth, transformation. So if I was to do a career reading for you or a business reading for you, the value that you bring out to the world is like what you just said in asking that question and provoking someone in a manner that gets them to really go very deep and face things that they don’t really want to face – the dark stuff. How does this feel for you?
Jacinda: Yeah. I think that’s what I really like to do. <Laugh>.
Tonya: Can you elaborate?
Jacinda: Sometimes I feel like Jacinda just shut up, not everybody’s ready to hear it. You know what I mean? To give you an example, I was talking to one of my customers – she said she could not sleep every night, and she had to resort to drinking help her sleep. I told her that if she can’t sleep at night, it usually means that one is not fulfilled in life. I thought it was easy to see that, but for her it was so deep. It dawned on her that she had to face the truth, and so she admitted that she was really not fulfilled. That was really scary for her.
One of my biggest fears is rejection and sometimes people reject you, but doesn’t mean later on they won’t come back, and when they’re ready they will actually still think about this.
But I saw that she wasn’t rejecting me. Now I can see she’s (my customer) was just not ready
Tonya: You actually have a lot of planets in the 8th house too. The 8th house is the area of life that has to do with transformations, crisis or helping people who are crisis or shining a light for people who are a crisis. Going into taboo topics, going into anything even to do with sex and psychology. It’s all the stuff that society really doesn’t want to look at, you are actually quite happy to just, you know, go and talk about it with people and bringing up the people as well.
I guess it good then, that you do have these conversations with your clients.
Jacinda: My friends, my family, my clients, everybody!
Tonya: Amazing. And is it part of a detox program that you have? Or is it just, free flow for you when it comes to giving them advice?
Jacinda: So free flow. Sometimes our customers who do our meal subscriptions come to The Breakfast Club to have a meal because they want to learn more about how they can enhance their health. I share with them my stories and my research. I also believe at the heart of healing, whether it’s your physical body or not, your mental health definitely plays a part too. If we can face our fears, we can probably heal a lot of other things.
People who are ready to make that investment in themselves and order their meals are people who are ready to take care of themselves and heal.
Tonya: I also wanted to highlight to you your career house, which is in the sign of Cancer. And Cancer is also very much about nourishing people. It’s about mothering people, taking care of them, giving them comfort as well. This is the kind of energy that you’re going to put out into the world. Cancer is ruled by the Moon in the 6th house. The 6th house for you is also about health, what you do on a daily basis, your daily routines and your daily working environment as well. You’ll do well at mothering or nurturing or providing emotional support or nourishing people as well. If you were to ask me, I would look at The Breakfast Club and Journey to Glow, and these two businesses fit in very well with this description.
Jacinda: Yeah. It’s so much more than just the food alone, you know? I just really hope that it can also nourish you in terms of not just your physical health, but also in terms of being a more open and more loving person.
Tonya: That is very, very interesting. I did some more calculations to arrive at your top psychological archetype. Planet Venus represents the person who likes beauty, who is sociable and loves relating. In your chart, Venus has a strong connection with Pluto. And what you’re able to see is that in terms of relationships, you make a very good social connector. You’re able to see value between person A and person B and connect them, almost like a broker. That’s the value that you are able to relationships within your network.
How does that play out for you?
Jacinda: I’ve been doing that at The Breakfast Club. I get to know my customers very quickly in a short span of time. They share with me their problems because I share my issues openly too. I can match two people together because I know what each of them needs and what they can give each other.
Tonya: How has the session been for you?
Jacinda: I’ve always been a big believer of astrology and how energy is all part of us. And now I think with that written in the chart, I have less doubts about myself, my capabilities and my dreams. I’m already doing many of the things you’ve mentioned, but sometimes I don’t know if I’m going in the right direction or not. What I’m doing is so different from others. I have no role model to affirm my path. But right now, I’m more accepting and am embracing myself.
Tonya: That’s really great. Thanks so much for your time and I’m really like amazed at how you are really living your design already. I’m really inspired by what you have put out here as well. If I had met you maybe five years ago, when I first encountered my gut issues, I would’ve just absolutely loved to follow you, because I also felt so alone in my own gut healing journey!
Jacinda: Thank you, Tonya. I had fun too.
