Tea Sommelier Turns Leaves Into Million-Dollar Business

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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What's up, what's up? Welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School, kicking off a new week. I am excited to bring you another set of real life side hustle stories. Today's story features a tea sommelier, which by the way, that is the correct pronunciation of the word.

I think I got it wrong yesterday. Win some, lose some. Anyway, this tea sommelier, or let's just say tea expert, she's really good at tea, turns leaves into a million dollar business. And this is a story of someone's journey from employee to entrepreneur. So just to make sure you have the context, the person you'll hear about now runs a high income business.

She's distributed everywhere doing tens of thousands of dollars on amazon.com each month. But in true side hustle fashion, this business started with just a $500 investment by an employee in the hospitality industry who continued to work her day job until her project was bringing in a lot of money and needed her full attention. I like to focus on origin stories here on the show, especially from people who started in a very bootstrapping fashion. Today's story definitely qualifies, and I'll bring it to you after this quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]

Sheena Brady had worked in the hospitality industry for many years, both in her native Canada and abroad.

When a new luxury hotel in Toronto invited her to launch the most extensive tea program in the city, she excitedly agreed. Sheena loved and was familiar with tea, but she knew she needed a high level of formal training if she was gonna create a well-educated team to run this program. She took courses and tests and eventually earned the prestigious title of tea sommelier from the Tea and Herbal Association of Canada. There we go with my new work. And by the way, herbal actually is pronounced that way in the American pronunciation, but depending on where you're listening from, you might know it as herbal.

Man, language is confusing. Running such an impressive tea program was rewarding, but it had its drawbacks. The required wardrobe was specific and had no room for interpretation. Sheena had to show up in a suit, pantyhose, red lipstick, heels, hair in a bun, and beige or clear nail polish. At least she got a choice on that, sort of.

For some people, a limited wardrobe and routine can help create focus and clarity, but for Sheena, it just felt constricting. She wanted to create. She needed to imagine. So she began designing her own tea blends after work, and not surprisingly, considering all that training she had, they were pretty great. An entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and before she knew it, she had developed an entire brand from the ground up.

She got in touch with her tea leaf connections from the hotel, sent them her packaging design, and placed her first order. Shopify was the clear choice for her simple endeavor, so she purchased a domain and began uploading products. After a $500 investment between product, the website, and marketing, Tease Tea launched. A few weeks went by, nothing much happened, but then Tease Tea got its first order from a complete stranger. That was three years ago, and that person is still ordering from Sheena.

But let's not get ahead of the story. At first, Sheena tried to make tea sexy, with flirty names and descriptions, but people didn't respond well to that. Turns out, nobody wants sexy tea. They want tea that will make them feel good, that will fit into their lifestyle. So she adjusted her marketing focus to prescribing tea for your every desire and goal.

Instead of trying to bring sexy back for tea, she was now recommending teas based on how the customer was feeling, and this customer-centric model was almost instantly more successful. Pricing the tea blends is a continual struggle. Most of her products sell at about a 30 to 50% margin, which isn't very high when you consider all the non-tea costs that go into running the business, especially in the beginning, a big portion of her expenses were devoted to shipping. In trying to overcome this challenge, she realized she had two options. Number one, she could focus much more on international orders.

Because of some weird economics and tax issues, shipping across Canada could cost as much as $14, but shipping to any other country in the world could be done as cheaply as $8. Second, she could also try to raise the average order price. Shipping 50 grams of tea was just as costly to ship as four pounds, so it made sense to get those average orders up as much as possible. She had a couple of great ideas to do this. One of them was to offer free shipping on orders of $50 or more, that way customers are far more likely to make larger orders, and also she began offering a larger portion of tea in a collectible tin at a slight discount.

Customers who want a reusable and more attractive container are likely to purchase this option. Time went by, sales grew, and Sheena began to itch for more time to work on tea's tea. It was scary, but she decided to leave her job at the luxury hotel, and she accepted a different part-time job that only took two days out of her week. Two years in, Sheena put tea's tea on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, and that's when things really took off, exponential growth. Sales continue to climb with an average monthly revenue falling between 60 and $80,000.

That's right, 60 to $80,000 on tea each month from Amazon.com and the Canadian site Amazon.ca. Also, the Four Seasons Hotel chain began buying her teas exclusively. She began donating a portion of sales to organizations around the world that empower women with skills and education. Tea's Tea is now about to hit the $1 million sales mark, which for Sheena, in just three years in, is a dream come true. She couldn't imagine when she started that her passion side hustle would turn into this thriving business, but it has.

She's already started a pop-up tea cafe in New York City, and she's got plans for more. Keep an eye out at your local supermarket. If it's not there already, Tea's Tea may show up on the shelves before too long, and if not, well, you can always get it on Amazon. [Music]

I just wanna pull a couple of practical points from this story. Obviously, I think it's fantastic and wonderful what Sheena's been able to do.

Also, it's pronounced so mille-yay, not whatever I said yesterday. But getting into some details, purchase options and bundles are good. Sheena increased her average order size by offering a special version of that container, which was pretty basic. It wasn't like an incredible idea that no one had ever had before, but it worked. Whenever you're selling a product, especially a physical product like this, you definitely wanna have some price tiers, some options, some room for customers to make choices.

And naturally, when you're buying something, those choices cost money. And then also Sheena had a pretty good start when she figured some stuff out, but her sales grew exponentially when she listed the products on Amazon. And that's not uncommon for the right product. Amazon reaches hundreds of millions of customers. So if your product hits well there, look out.

However, I love the way she did it because it's not necessarily best to run out and list on Amazon right away. You wanna do it after you've done some testing and you feel confident in what you're offering. When Sheena was starting with the sexy tea idea, it probably wouldn't have worked as well if she went to Amazon straight away. But she waited until she had a winner and then she went to the marketplace that reaches more people than anyone else. And then it just took off even further from there, like I said, 60 to $80,000 a month and growing.

Anyway, congratulations, Sheena. Everyone be on the lookout for teas tea. And to find the show notes for today's episode, go to sidehustleschool.com/240, that's 2-4-0. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. I'll be back tomorrow.

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