I didn’t expect to meet a new friend at 52. Certainly not because she clicked on an ad for protein powder.
On January 3rd of this year, SecondSpring showed up in Giann’s following list. Something about her profile made me reach out immediately: from one female founder to another.
Her reply came back fast.
“I’m really excited to try your whey isolate with collagen. It’s very aligned with my lifestyle and what I believe in. I strongly advocate proper protein intake, especially for Filipinas.”
Four days later, we met at her café, Good Habits. Less than two months after that, we launched a collaboration.
Giann built Good Habits on one quiet conviction: that food can taste extraordinary without sugar. Her tagline is Sinfully Good, Saintly Clean, and she means it: every item on her menu is sugar-free, made with premium ingredients, because she refuses to accept that eating well has to feel like punishment.
By day, she runs a construction company with her husband. She’s also a committed CrossFit practitioner who already brings her two young boys along for CrossFit kids’ sessions, because she believes good habits don’t wait for adulthood to begin.
When Carlos heard how much I was talking about her, he said I had a girl crush.
I gave him the look that wives reserve for moments like these.
What stayed with me wasn’t the collaboration itself -- it was everything around it.
Nobody asked Giann to start posting protein education content on her own channels. There was no content agreement, no clause in any brief. She just believed in it, and so she did it. Consistently and quietly.
That’s not strategy. That’s conviction -- and you can feel the difference.
When we were choosing our favorite between the two limited edition drinks for our collab, I told her mine was the Rose Berry Bloom Latte: coffee with a hint of rose and a full serve of protein. Strong and soft at the same time, which felt right.
Giann went with the Pretty Strong Lemon. Because strong is pretty.
We both laughed. Not the polite kind but the kind that happens when you realize someone has been thinking the same thing as you, just from a different direction.
That pretty and strong are not a contradiction. They’re the whole point.
She also made me think about habits differently.
Not the optimized, color-coded, start-on-a-Monday-and-promise-to-do-everyday version but the kind that actually survives real life.
A good habit doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be something you can begin. Something that fits the life you’re actually living, not the one you planned. Something you can keep doing even when you do it badly.
Giann embodies this without ever making a production of it. She didn’t wait for the right moment or the right number of followers before she started educating women about protein. She just started. And she kept going.
Four days after a stranger reached out to her on Instagram, she invited that stranger into her café.
And then last weekend, when she was introducing me to members of her CrossFit community, she said: “This is my friend, Jasmin.”
At 52, I genuinely thought I already knew who my people were.
You spend decades earning trust, losing some, keeping what matters. At some point, you think the circle is set. Closed, even.
And then your world gets bigger anyway and in the most unexpected places. At the intersection of protein shakes and perimenopause, of all things.
It was the first weekend of the year when I first reached out, and part of me thought I should wait until Monday, when people are in work mode.
But I’ve learned -- both from SecondSpring and from relationships longer than that -- timing isn’t set by the calendar.
It’s set by when something feels right.
And when your intentions are in the right place, the person on the other end feels that too.
Someone once offered this as wish, and I’ve been carrying it around ever since: may you always surprise yourself. Though in my experience, the surprises come faster when you’re the one who takes the first step. You can only win the lottery if you buy a ticket.
Carlos better watch out.