874 Jennifer Martinez: Founder of Elevation Tea Company

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the platform helping businesses run smarter.

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2:21Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive. in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

3:06Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

3:48Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kira Golden Show. What if tea became the new wine experience minus the alcohol? Today, I'm joined by Jennifer Martinez, founder of Elevation Tea Company, a premium tea brand sourcing rare, organic, small batch teas from underrepresented regions from around the world. and they're not just selling tea.

4:35Kara Goldin:The brand is creating a more intentional tasting experience, one built around origin and flavor, aroma. So, so good from incredible places like Colombia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Nepal. So the company's new rare tea testing kit really takes that idea even further. I can't wait to talk with Jennifer about what it takes to build a premium tea brand in today's consumer market. And really, more than anything, what her journey has been like in building this incredible company as a founder. So Elevation Tea Company has really done it. And the products and the teas, of course, are excellent. So I'm so excited to have Jennifer with us here today.

5:29Kara Goldin:So welcome to the Carol Golden Show. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to share my journey and the journey of the company with you. Very excited. So for listeners who may not know Elevation Tea Company yet, how do you describe the brand and what makes it unique? You know, what makes us unique is we are by nature a loose leaf tea company. I think there's, you know, loose leaf tea companies all over the place. We stand out in the fact that we are representing these kind of farmer stories and the struggle that comes along with, you know, growing tea in these places that wasn't necessarily meant for growing these tea leaves.

6:14We like to take those stories and bring them to people, you know, here in the United States, sharing, you know, just the nuances of the tea, like you mentioned, the different terroir and the way that the climates play into everything. And so we really like to emphasize that perhaps growing up near the wine country is why I'm more prone to kind of that approach. But, you know, that's really what makes us stand out is these these personal relationships that I built with these farmers and really taking these places that are underrepresented and not in your traditional team app. right outside of China and India, where people are mostly used to seeing tea come from, and stepping out of those boundaries.

7:03And that's really what we're here to do. All of our flavoring is organic. All of our tea that we use for blends is the same rare tea that we have for sale in traditional style leaves.

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10:54Kara Goldin:Decagon helps companies create personalized, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24-7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own, so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Decagon plugs into your existing systems, and workflows can be updated using natural language. Teams can make changes themselves without long engineering cycles. Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation. Decagon helps power millions of conversations every day for brands you know and love, including Avis, Affirm, Fanatics, and Aura.

11:43Kara Goldin:Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai slash Kara Golden to get a personalized demo and see what Decagon can do for your team. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai slash Kara Golden. That's decagon.ai slash Kara Golden. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by I am eight. One thing I've learned over the years is that taking care of yourself shouldn't feel like a full-time job. Somewhere along the way, wellness became about adding more. More bottles, more powders, more pills. That's why IM8's Daily Ultimate Essentials really stood out to me. IM8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine once and for all.

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13:20Kara Goldin:I mix one drink, and I'm not wondering what I've taken or what I've missed. It tastes good, it fits into my routine, and it gives me a great boost I can feel good about. Give it a try. Go to imhealth.com slash Cara Golden right now or click on the link in the description and use code Cara Golden for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10 % off your order. That's code Cara Golden at im8health.com slash Cara Golden. Code Cara Golden at im8health.com slash Cara Golden. What is the most unique tea that you have? And can you share a little bit about the backstory on it and why you think it's so special?

14:08Gosh, yeah. Oh, man. I'm a tea geek, so that's going to be a hard one to narrow down. You know, I think probably my most unique one is going to fall down to one from Colombia. So it's a Colombian tea, and it's called Andean Needle. And so I know there's some people that are more familiar with a Japanese-style tea called Hojicha, which is kind of like this roasted black tea concept. and you get this little, kind of brings out the caramelization, things like that. Well, in Colombia, they're doing their own version of this. Their tea master, Claudio, he came up with this idea of let's take the tea leaf, right?

14:48And I mean, it's so meticulous. They are getting just the mid veins and the parts of the stem inside of the tea leaf. So those tiny little pieces. And they're only using those in a black tea that they roast. So just being the nature of it, being from Columbia, growing in those soils that are already rich with cacao and cane sugar, those natural, you know, flavors come through once they start roasting it. And in the end, your cup has this beautiful, you know, chocolatey caramel date kind of flavor profile. So I think that's probably the most unique that we're going to get with tea here.

15:32Kara Goldin:You launched the company after a career in fintech and graphic design. So what made you decide, I'm going to go and launch a company and actually a company in the T space? Yeah, yeah. Not the most natural transition, right? But yeah, I was working with a fintech company doing UX design. And I think it was really just about, I kept seeing other people's dreams come to life through design, watching other companies have brand really bring to life what they were dreaming of for years. And I thought, what would happen if I applied, you know, my skills to something of my own? I've always had that kind of entrepreneur, you know, spirit in me.

16:25So I thought, like, let's give this a shot. At the time, my most recent obsession was loose leaf tea. And so this was like the time where like the Teavanas were still in the mall. And I really just thought, let's combine the two. Let's see what happens. And that's how Elevation Tea was formed. And I think it's changed a lot and evolved since then. But that was really my unnatural but natural transition from UX design into the tea space.

16:59Kara Goldin:So you have teas from places like Colombia and Kenya and Tanzania and Nepal. How did you find these teas and what was the process of actually not only finding them, but ultimately picking the ones that you did? Yeah, so the very first one that I started importing directly from was my Kenya tea farm, Tumoy Teas. And that happened because the supplier that I was using for my Kenya tea was that I didn't have access to them anymore. So they stopped carrying the product. And it was such a the purple tea alone from Kenya was so important to the business at the time, because back then, you know, we were really more of a drink company.

17:53So that was one of the things that changed along the way. And we were using this purple tea in our drinks. I mean, we were going through about 60 gallons a week of it. So I couldn't lose access to that. It was then that I actually started to hunt down and dig and they're not easy to find, you know. So I found the farm, reached out to the owner and expressed that, you know, I know, you know, you don't normally, you know, import directly to, you know, in smaller size batches. But, you know, even though I was ordering what to me was large at the time, it was still considered smaller, you know, to import.

18:35But they worked with me. That was our entry into importing directly. after that you know i think it's just a lot of being very relentless and and maybe even a little bit annoying at times um you know i would just see maybe like a post on instagram from somebody um you know in another country and in argentina or peru talking about this new tea that they're trying from a farm in you know peru and you know hunting down i mean i must have you know messaged about 10 people trying to get to how do i find this farmer and we are we actually found them so we will be the first company in the united states to introduce peruvian tea grown right next to the ancient ruins of machu picchu so that one took a lot of effort but i mean each one of them the story it kind of goes the same way where it's just you know if you see something and you just keep digging and digging until you figure out where it's coming from.

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22:07Kara Goldin:Decagon helps companies create personalized, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24-7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own. So businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Decagon plugs into your existing systems and workflows can be updated using natural language. Teams can make changes themselves without long engineering cycles. Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation. Decagon helps power millions of conversations every day for brands you know and love, including Avis, Affirm, Fanatics, and Aura.

22:56Kara Goldin:Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai slash Karagolden to get a personalized demo and see what Decagon can do for your team. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai slash Karagolden. That's decagon.ai slash Karagolden. This episode of the Cara Golden Show is brought to you by I Am8. One thing I've learned over the years is that taking care of yourself shouldn't feel like a full-time job. Somewhere along the way, wellness became about adding more. More bottles, more powders, more pills. That's why I Am8's Daily Ultimate Essentials really stood out to me. I Am8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine once and for all.

23:43Kara Goldin:16 supplements, 90 ingredients across nine major organ systems, all in one drink. It was co-founded by David Beckham and built by leading doctors and researchers, and it's designed to support so many of the things we're all thinking about, energy, focus, immunity, digestion, and long-term wellness. And the value is impressive. Instead of buying all those separate supplements, Daily Ultimate Essentials gives you 16 supplements in one drink for$2.61 a day. Plus, in a clinical trial conducted by the San Francisco Research Institute, 95 % of people who tried it for 12 weeks felt more energy. For me, it has made my mornings so much easier.

24:33Kara Goldin:I mix one drink and I'm not wondering what I've taken or what I've missed. It tastes good, it fits into my routine, and it gives me a great boost I can feel good about. Give it a try. Go to IamHealth.com slash Karagolden right now or click on the link in the description and use code Karagolden for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10 % off your order. That's code CARAgolden at im8health.com slash CARAgolden. Code CARAgolden at im8health.com slash CARAgolden. For the average consumer who doesn't know anything about tea, what do you look for when you're sourcing a tea but also consuming a tea?

25:23Oh, yeah. Organic is number one. So that is by far the most important thing. And when you brew that cup of tea, I don't think a lot of people realize that that is the very first time you're washing that tea, right? So if there's pesticides all over it, you're brewing that right into that cup of tea, and then you're consuming it. So that is the most important part for me. and you know secondary to that if you're looking for an elevated tea experience you know go beyond that and really look for teas that have stories behind them you know be able to use that that morning brew or that afternoon pick me up as also a time to kind of reflect and connect not only to the the earth that it was grown in but also to these farmers in these different countries where you know, we kind of lose that human connection at times.

26:23So find that really something that's going to really spark that creative part of you and give that time of reflection.

26:31Kara Goldin:So when you look at like misconceptions about tea beyond organic, you know, it's gone are the days where it's just about Lipton tea on the shelf and a basic tea, but there's so much to choose from. When you think about maybe a first entree into tea, what do you think people should try if maybe they're not a tea drinker? Yeah, I think there's like the two most common teas. And I'll stick with like traditional teas instead of going outside to herbals. But, you know, the two most common are like, you know, what we would call like a breakfast style tea, right? So something kind of a more bold black tea.

27:14For us, I think the Colombian black tea, their standard black tea, that's incredible Same natural notes of cacao in there So that really kind of jumpstarts the morning, very, very easy drinking So anything that's kind of a bolder black tea is good And then on the other part for like green teas, you know, we have these gunpowder teas which are very familiar, especially if you've ever, you know, dined, you know, in a Chinese or Japanese restaurant and ordered a pot of green tea. So your gunpowder teas are going to be the closest related to what you would have experienced there. So those are very nice segues into the tea world.

27:56Kara Goldin:So you have, you recently launched the Rare Tea Tasting Kit. Can you talk about that and what inspired you to launch that? Yeah, no, that's my new favorite product. So, you know, I think really the biggest part of that was a way to represent and be able to get people to try multiple different growing regions at once while also bringing in a huge part of me. You know, I mentioned earlier, you know, growing up near the Napa Valley. It's like that was ingrained in us growing up. You know, it's like that's a part of life is being able to spot those flavor profiles, those aromas and really taking notes and that wine tasting experience.

28:42I really wanted to bring that to tea. You know, we really haven't seen that brought to the industry. There's aroma wheels out there, but they're not they're not focusing on those flavor profiles that step outside of the traditional tea map as well. And so the Rare Tea Tasting Kit was really a way for me to be able to say, hey, look, there is an alternative to, you know, wine drinking. Let's do the same thing with tea. And let's see, you know, if I give you, you know, two different black teas, what can you pull out that's different between the two just based on the terroir and the craftsmanship that's brought to that tea?

29:23Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Decagon. As companies grow, customer support gets harder. More customers, more questions, more channels, and higher expectations. And a lot of teams want AI that can help, but without making the experience feel robotic or generic. Decagon helps companies create personalized, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24-7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own. So businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Decagon plugs into your existing systems and workflows can be updated using natural language.