What advice would you give someone considering starting their own small business?

Just start it. People have asked me that over the years and it’s always the biggest thing. What I’ve found, and this is just a life lesson too, is that people create their own cages. And if you realize you’re not in a cage, the first thing you have to do is step out and do something different. And that’s really the biggest barrier, just starting it.

That’s the number one thing I’ve learned for any opportunity once you’re in the business too–the scariest step is just to make a decision to do something. And being able to move forward, being able to make a plan, etcetera, all those different things–you can learn or you can hire people, but the actual decision is a big deal.

Secondarily, if you want to grow your business at all you have to give other people authority. It’s easy to provide responsibilities, it’s easy to say “it’s your responsibility to keep the vehicles running,” but it’s a lot harder to give them authority to buy and sell the vehicles for the business.

That’s the second thing that hampers most entrepreneurs, and to us, to a certain extent, even though we know this and realize this. Giving up authority in the different roles is still one of the hardest things you can do, but it’s one of the biggest things that keeps entrepreneurs from being able to provide any growth for a situation where you aren’t doing everything yourself.

There’s a well-known “Triple-P system”–people, products, or process. So that’s how we try to analyze everything. If your process is fine, then it’s your people or your product that’s the problem. If your product is fine, it’s your process or people that’s the problem, etcetera. Being able to go through situations and analyze which one of those is the biggest issue in every situation really helps as well.

I see that businesses around the nation sell your tea. How widespread is your distribution network?

I think we have wholesale clients in all fifty states now. A lot of them are a lot smaller–we try to work with independent businesses. We don’t have many, if any, large corporate accounts…so we try to work with people that we’re mutually beneficial partners with.

We have a lot of independent businesses that serve our tea and do a good job, and we try to share their social media on our Instagram, and that’s the biggest thing. I think right now we have about 300 accounts and they’re not super high volume but it’s a mixture of cafes and boutiques and grocery stores that are all independently owned and have businesses all over the nation.

What do you see as the secret to your success?

There’s no secret, it’s just too many hours of my life. I mean, half jokingly, half seriously–this is a lifestyle business, we tell our employees coming in that this is a lifestyle business. Meaning that if you don’t want to be part of the lifestyle, you don’t want to create connections with people, this isn’t the right business to be in.

This is a place where we want to create partnerships, we want to increase quality of life. Because of that, because we are so focused on that, we don’t pay the most, but we hope that people will see that the quality of life that they have is so much more positive.

We’ve had employees who get here, who get frustrated because they’re not getting paid as much as other jobs. They leave, and then they say ‘hey, can we come back’ because they realized after a while how important that quality of life is. So that’s the biggest secret–if it’s something that reflects who you are, dedicate your way of life to it.

For actual business sense, and this is something that will sound really, really simple and really, like, everyone should know that–but your numbers have to balance. We do open book management in our business, meaning all employees have access to our numbers and how business is doing.

When I started this business I didn’t know how the numbers worked–I didn’t have financial classes [or] financial information. It wasn’t until about 4-5 years in [that] we almost had to close down the business due to not having any funds left…we redid everything at that point.

We took in two strategies that we learned about. One is open book management…and another one was Profit First, another book series. We have like seven bank accounts and the idea is twice a month you distribute all the money and there are certain accounts you can’t touch, period. No matter what.

So what that means is you always have a profit, because before it was ‘we have a problem, throw money at it; we have a problem, throw money at it…uh oh, we have a problem and there’s no money left.’

With Profit First, you have to get a lot more creative. And when I say make the numbers work, that’s a really simple answer, but the bigger answer is have a budget, stick to the budget, do not touch the numbers that put money in your pocket because otherwise you and the business will fail.

You have to have that strict level of accountability and so…it’s annoying, it’s difficult to have seven bank accounts. I go to the bank and can never remember which one anything’s supposed to go into ‘cause there’s seven of them, but that’s what’s kept us alive and I wouldn’t say thriving, but we weren’t hurting necessarily too much after March 2020 because we had profit in the profit account, we had money in the operations account, we had money in payroll, and we knew ‘hey, everything’s where it’s supposed to be and we can ride out some of these storms for a while.’

What is your favorite part of being a business owner?

Although I’m drastically busy, having the ability to solve problems as well as having the ability to make my own schedule. I’m a problem solver by nature so that’s really nice and fun to do but in

working, technically we’d sometimes say we’re never off…I try to keep it down to about 50 hours a week these days, 50-60.

But because of that I’m also able to see a gap in my schedule and say ‘oh, I can do something for myself.’ I’m trying to do for myself during this timeframe because at the end of the day I know I’m going to be working on my work and there’s never going to be a shortage of hours.

Recently, for example, my parents invited me on an impromptu trip and against my better judgment I went, and it was fun…and yeah, there was stuff that needed to be done but there’s always stuff that needs to be done, and you’re able to make those decisions in a responsible way.

The other part is being able to solve problems. If you want someone to disengage from their work, I’ve found, don’t give them any problems to solve. Some people want that. We typically try to not hire those people.

We want people who solve problems and that means that sometimes they come up with the wrong answer that you won’t choose, going back to the whole authority thing–that’s what relationship discussion and accountability is for. And being able to be a part of a culture that is that and being able to create a positive culture when I’ve come from so many toxic work experiences myself, I think that’s probably one of the most important things to me.

Any final thoughts or words of wisdom?

I would really say from talking to people, from my own experiences…if you’re interested in business or you’re interested in any new opportunity, the hardest part is just making the decision and doing it. People analyze, analyze, analyze, they think think think think think, but you can’t ever get to the next level without taking a step. And so you have to do that every single time.

Sometimes it’s better to just figure it out because the worst thing that happens is what, you fail? You’re not going to be tortured, you’re not gonna get killed, the worst that’s going to happen is that you’re going to lose some money. You can try, try again. Very few rewards come without risk and you can’t ever get there without taking that step.