Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in food and beverage but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Michael Ortiz, founder, and CEO of JoJo Tea, located in Miami, FL, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
We are the best tea company in the history of the world. I didn't believe it myself for a long time. But, it turns out that it's true. Tea is simply healthy, delicious, and informed by millennia of refinement. It has zero calories and has a mild mix of caffeine and L-Theanine. The caffeine stimulates, and the L-Theanine helps with relaxation and focus. As such, tea is the beverage of the informed. Our customers are informed.
Tell us about yourself
Peace motivates me. I think that people make their best decisions when they come from a place of peace of mind. The practice of tea is ultimately a practice of both deliciousness and peace of mind. It is the practice of curating the flavors and context for a moment of peace.
I studied acting in college, where I was introduced to yoga in movement class and breathwork in voice class. The experiential, practice-oriented nature of Eastern spirituality fascinated me so much that I became a yoga instructor. My students used to ask me to teach them to meditate, but I didn't know how to do that. So, I found a small Buddhist temple in Coconut Grove. The teacher was a recognized master by various Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese lineages of Buddhism. She was a master of meditation, but, according to her, meditation was not her real root practice. That was tea.
I didn't get the obsession with tea at all. I just figured this lady was REALLY into tea and thought maybe I'd understand that one day, but I knew I wanted to learn meditation from this master. I spent three years studying meditation at that temple, and tea was a part of every day. There, I saw the way that the warm, delicious tea settled the spirits of frazzled guests. When our teacher made tea, it felt like the whole city got quiet.
It's easy to find ourselves swept up in the momentum of modernity, or post-modernity, or post-post-modernity, or whatever you want to call the present-day Instagram Tiktok Twitter Planet Earth that we inhabit. My goal is to infuse deep moments of peace throughout, and what motivates me is the dream of a culture that values these moments of peace enough to make them practice.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
I hate to say this because of how arrogant it sounds. But, I guess I'm a little arrogant, so here goes: I think it's impossible to separate any particular accomplishment within the entire holistic birth, survival, and growth of JoJo Tea. I started JoJo with $2000. I was a yoga teacher that literally didn't know what an invoice was. We've opened over 300 accounts. We do business with restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, and even Virgin Voyages, the new cruise line. Since 2011, we have built a machine to sell tea to restaurants, and COVID looked like the end, truthfully. We were down 85% of revenue during the worst months of lockdown. But, here we are! From the opening of the first account to our first trips to China, Taiwan, and India, through my winning of the first-ever American championship of the Tea Master's Cup, it's almost impossible to separate any particular accomplishment in my mind. They were all carefully considered and came from the same intention.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
No two business owners are the same. There are so many reasons for opening a business. For me, JoJo Tea was the answer to an honest question I had. How can I find teas at the level of what I drank at the temple? I saw the way that my meditation practice developed when I had access to that level of tea.
For me, the hardest thing about being a business owner is the loneliness that comes with having a vision that is ultimately confined to my own mind. As different team members come and go, and different teams come and go, I have seen us go from loose tea in a Ziploc for my buddies to the biggest tea brand in South Florida servicing cruise lines and hotels.
I had heard people say, "it's lonely at the top," and I didn't really understand it. But today, after ten years of running JoJo Tea, it's almost like each current accomplishment wakes up memories and echoes of the past. Like, when we signed with a new hospitality group that owns several restaurants, I remember my first sales meetings, rejection after rejection, before some tiny popup in Coral Gables finally understood what we were up to. I remember the rush of victory when we'd pick up these tiny accounts. And in a way, it's like those first small victories meant to me than today's much bigger victories. Which in turn, makes me feel a little separated and alienated from the team that's celebrating today's victories.
I don't know, I hope I didn't turn this question too melodramatic, but at the end of the day, to me, that's been the hardest thing.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- You have to be really good at making decisions and executing on them, but you also have to be really good at knowing what you don't know. Gather info, but don't get paralyzed in the search for data. And then make your decision and move forward.
- What is management? Peter Drucker defines it as: influencing a group of people to work toward common goals in ways that maximize their strengths and makes their weaknesses irrelevant. When building your teams, I don't think it's a good idea to force people outside of their comfort zones and then keep them there with the idea that you're helping them grow. You could actually be slowing their progress, as well as that of the entire team.
- There are many different philosophies about business and its growth. I believe that the growth of JoJo Tea should be like the change of the seasons. It's slow and steady and can not be stopped. In your endeavor, make sure that what you do today builds off of what you did yesterday. And make sure that when you wrap your day up, you leave an easy and obvious next step for the next day. In this way, little by little, you'll grow in your capabilities and understanding until one day, you look back in amazement at the growth you've seen.
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
We tend to fetishize passion and work as a culture. And if you are one of those poor souls that haven't discovered your passion yet, well, then you're hopeless. And that's trash. Allow plenty of room for your curiosities to inform your days. Explore your hobbies and invest in your curiosity. That's where your joy and your passion wait.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://sipjojo.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sipjojo/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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