Steeped in Possibili-Tea with Sashee Chandran, Founder and CEO of Tea Drops

Stairway to CEO

In This Episode You’ll Hear About:

• How growing up with entrepreneurial parents taught her a lot about hard work and hustle and why she was always interested in creative type careers
• What types of jobs helped her learn how to run a successful business and why her time at eBay was impactful in her experience with marketing, which is helpful today as she has been marketing her own product
• Why tea has always been an important part of Sashee’s life and how that became a pivotal part of becoming a Founder and creating Tea Drops
• What the impetus was for getting her to prove the concept and build her company on a solid foundation that led to more opportunities
• Why she is thankful she had to bootstrap this business in the beginning and why it helped her make great, strategic decisions early on
• What struggles Sashee and her team had to overcome in the beginning of building Tea Drops and what struggles still occur now
• What fears she had to overcome, including the fear of public speaking, which she has now conquered and actually been rewarded for great pitches by PepsiCo and Tory Burch
• How she’s grown as a leader and what great advice she has for other Founders and operators who are wanting to build a successful business while maintaining a healthy life/work integration

To Find Out More:

MyTeaDrop.com

Quotes:

“I got exposed to email marketing, digital marketing, our social giving platform called eBay Giving Works at the time. And so I was exposed to a lot of different facets of marketing and that all was very useful when the time came for me to actually start marketing my own product.”

“Growing up I was always exposed to tea culture and not just from a functional standpoint, that tea is a functional beverage that's good for you, but very much so that tea is this communal beverage that connects you to your culture, connects you to other people and connects you to your family.”

“I loved every aspect of it. I loved the challenge of it. I loved not knowing what was happening next, but really working on something that I felt needed to exist in the world.”

“Don't get me wrong, I was very scared. But I also knew that if I didn't try it now, I would have a sense of regret about it.”

“Everything is nice in theory, but when you actually have to put it into application, practically do it, it's a whole different ball game.”

“What bootstrapping does is it provides you with a certain discipline. You have to make hard choices and you have to do it with your own money.”

“I grew the brand organically to probably 500K in revenue just from these boutique retailers before I took in capital, and that was really just a function of building a close relationship with the retailer early on.”

“I think the challenge is more so just keeping an eye on what is your end goal and objective and not being so dissuaded or deflated by the feedback that people are naturally going to have, especially with something that's new.”