Ashley Haywood is the founder of Embrew and creator of the first sweetened artisan tea bag on the market. She’s an entrepreneur, speaker, adventurer, boy-mom and challenger (Enneagram 8). She’s an extrovert who loves people, laughing, and empowering others to grow personally and professionally. As an avid tea drinker, full-time entrepreneur, a wife and mother of two young children, she went looking for a sweetened tea bag to remove a step from the process of making the perfect cup. After many years of empty Google searches for a pre-sweetened tea bag, she decided she would bring it to life herself, even if that meant spending the little free time she had to follow her dream of becoming an entrepreneur and shortening the distance between busy lives and a balanced cup of tea.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I have a really hard time prioritizing myself. I have a bad habit of filling my time with tasks and spending my day doing things for others, whether for work or at home. Rarely do things make it on my to-do list that are specifically for me and what I want to do. But, there has been one thing that is a constant. One thing that does bring me back to myself, my joy, my happiness.
Tea.
Picking up that warm mug with both hands, letting the steam hit my face as I take the first sip that brings me right into the present moment.
As a long-time tea drinker, I’ve never been into the whole setup and clean up required for loose leaf tea, because it always took too much time. Between trying to figure out the blends I liked, how much sweetener and what type was just right, most times it was too much of a hassle so I ended up settling for an “okay” cup of tea that came from a grocery store tea bag, because it was easy.
But then, 13 years ago, it dawned on me that if there were just tea bags with the blends I liked that had the perfect amount of sweetener already in them, I could have a great cup of tea in record time with no clean-up! I was hoping I could find a tea company making sweetened tea bags, but I could not find a single result on Google or in any store. Not one, for over 8 years.
Fast forward to 2016 after I had my second son, I was feeling lost in the identity of being a mom of two and knew I needed something I could work on and call my very own creation that didn’t need me to feed it every 2 hours. Well, you can imagine how that turned out to be a pipe dream. Nonetheless, I created an LLC for Embrew, started creating tea recipes and learned how to bring a product to market.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
I don’t consider much of what I’ve done a mistake, but more of a painful learning opportunity. If we are not uncomfortable, we aren’t learning, right?
One big change I made from my initial business model was closing the door on creating sweetened coffee brew bags as well as tea. I had gone down the path of R&D to create a brewing bag experience for coffee that would mirror a french press experience without all of the equipment. However, with the differences in coffee and the requirements needed to keep it from going stale, compounded with the fact that I’m not passionate about coffee, I decided to pursue tea exclusively and haven’t turned back since.
My biggest challenge early on was finding a co-packer who could take my recipes and put the tea and sweetener through a bagging machine. “We can’t do that.” “That’s not possible,” they’d say. But two years after hand-bagging every single tea bag, I found a US-based co-packing partner who became pivotal in expanding my production capability and growth. I wish I had spent more time trying to find a co-packer sooner, but everything comes at the right time.
One other regret is not hiring a bookkeeper right out of the gate. I spent the first 3 years of my business trying to maintain a P&L and file my taxes appropriately and ended up spending days and days pulling my books together at the end of the year to prepare for taxes. It wasn’t until 2020 that I hired a bookkeeper to train me and work alongside me in Quickbooks to maintain my books for Embrew every month and now tax season is such a relief, plus I have an accurate P&L to review throughout the year.
What are you learning now? Why is that important?
I’m learning how to stay focused. This has been tough for me as I transitioned from the corporate world of structure, deadlines and accountability to being an entrepreneur and having unlimited flexibility in the workday. Since working full time on Embrew, I’ve learned how much I truly thrive in the corporate environment in many ways (but certainly not all) and now I’m enjoying the agility and freedom of being my own boss, but also incorporating the structure I need to stay focused on the projects that are going to make the most impact on the growth of the business.
Honestly, some days are better than others, but putting calls on the calendar to talk about my business with new connections, my SBDC business consultant, several business mentors and other small business owners has kept me motivated and inspired to continue taking baby steps toward my goals for Embrew.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
The biggest impact to my business early on was participating and vending at local events so that I could talk to customers face-to-face. This allowed me to learn about their needs and wants so I could directly apply that information to my product and marketing. It’s so much more difficult to get qualitative research and data points for your business from customers who buy from you online or in stores nearly as well compared to engaging with them in a personal setting while they interact with your product directly. I have learned a lot about what customers like and dislike, who to target, and what the persona is that love my teas.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
There isn’t much direct competition in the space yet. The key differentiator of my product is that the sweetener is already inside the tea bag, so everyone can have an amazing cup of tea in the shortest possible time with no messy infusers or sticky honey.
What I try to do differently from other tea companies, and really any other CPG business, is maintain a personal relationship with existing and prospective customers. I do this with storytelling, humor, entertainment and expertise while expanding their tea obsession and making it just a little bit easier to enjoy on the regular.
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
Own the city where your business is based. Rather than try to expand outside of the area and spread marketing dollars out geographically, focus the first few years getting into more local stores, gaining traction with local press and blogs and having presence at many regular markets and events if that makes sense for your business. My goal is to make sure tea enthusiasts in the St Pete and Tampa area know that Embrew is locally made and the creator of the first sweetened artisan tea bags. Then, I’ll be moving on beyond the area to take on the region and eventually continental United States.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
Make lists and re-prioritize them a few times a week. This simple exercise has helped me stay focused on the most important tasks without feeling like I’m being pulled in a million different directions and becoming frozen.
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs?
Seth Godin’s book called The Practice, has so many important things to say about doing meaningful work and actually “shipping the work”, showing it to someone or putting it out there for the world. It’s about getting ideas out of our heads and creating our own art, whether that’s with tangible products, an app or blog, accounting services, painting, writing, etc. The biggest focus of the book is about the love and generosity of the journey (the practice) and moving our focus away from the outcome, which we cannot control. I need this reminder daily as I grind through the tasks of entrepreneurship, dealing with self-doubt so that I can refocus on the appreciation of the creation process.
A podcast I listen to regularly is How I Built This, from NPR, hosted by Guy Raz. This podcast is important to me because of the storytelling behind how entrepreneurs and founders got their start and made it big (or didn’t). It focuses on the real stories behind the brands. The struggles, the mistakes, the regrets, what was stacked against them and how they overcame everything to continue on to build one of the nation’s biggest brands. I sometimes forget that there are no ‘overnight successes’ and that founders had to put one foot in front of the other every day and push through a ton of challenges to keep their business from going under. I don’t need a fairy tale, I need inspiration from entrepreneurs who I can relate to in our collective struggles.
An online course that I’m currently taking, which is making a huge impact in how I think about my business, is paired with a book called Business Made Simple by Donald Miller. He has created a business around helping other business owners and leaders craft a business model that works with true practical resources and steps for success. The course is free with the purchase of the book (as of this writing), so they work very well together and the book + course isn’t expensive.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
Shopify, Airtable, and the Google suite of tools. The Shopify platform is invaluable to my business and was critical at the launch. With such a robust tool with open source coding and apps galore, I was able to get up and running with an eCommerce store in minutes and can the platform can (and has) grown with me.
Airtable has a free account that combines the functionality of project management tools, communication, documentation, workflow, etc all in one place. It communicates directly with Google Docs, Drive and other tools so I’m not creating documents or folders in multiple places. Without the Google suite of tools working in the Cloud, I would be spending an enormous amount of time and energy maintaining information and communication for Embrew.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
I am intentional about the space and time I create for my business while maintaining boundaries around the hours of the day that I’m working, checking email, taking phone calls or getting sucked into social media. I set goals for my personal time so that I know I’m prioritizing my husband and two sons alongside my work, even if sometimes the two worlds collide. This helps me feel like I’m making progress in my work, on myself and still prioritizing my family. When I’m in balance, my world flows abundantly in all directions, including in my business.
What is your favorite quote?
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about CREATING yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
As events start back up, I’m pulling a team together to have presence locally and continue building up face-to-face interactions. I’m contacting more restaurants and stores in the area to give customers an opportunity to find my teas in the stores where they are already shopping.
I’m also building an online subscription service to transition my regular customers to a program that helps make their tea experience even easier. I’m building custom landing pages on the web site and working to ensure that any new traffic-driving initiatives result in conversions because I improved the customer journey, created a concise message and buying experience. Then, I’ll move on to investing more into content generation and dedicating more online ad budget.
How can our readers connect with you?
You can find the assortment of sweetened artisan tea bags on my website embrew.com and the best way to reach me is by email ashley@embrew.com. If you prefer to follow Embrew on social, here you can find the brand accounts for Instagram: @embrewtea and Facebook Embrew Tea.
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