Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in food and beverage but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Paul Higgins, Co-Founder, and CEO of Clover Botanicals, located in Toronto, ON, Canada.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Clover crafts functional beverages made of clean, ethically sourced, organic ingredients with no additives. Our focus is on adaptogenic herbs, plants, and mushrooms, and our mission is to help people naturally restore happiness and balance to perform at their best. We are experts at blending botanicals, herbs, and, most importantly, adaptogens for the best results, which we have shown with our Adaptogenic Super Teas, crafted to help you with stress and other common health ailments. We are a catalyst for self-improvement, and our vision is to help people realize their true potential for a happy and healthy life, so naturally, our customers are wellness-minded individuals on a journey of constant progress.
Tell us about yourself
My name is Paul Higgins, and I founded Clover Botanicals with the goal of creating a business driven by ethics, sustainability, and helping people live their optimal lives.
With great admiration for Yvon Chouinard and the Patagonia brand philosophy, I wanted to create a business model that prioritized purpose over profits. To achieve this goal, I made a commitment to creating high-quality, sustainable products designed to facilitate a healthy mind and body while working to leave the planet better off than how I found it. With the abundance of excess and waste in most consumer products, it became imperative to me that all decisions needed to contribute to the wellbeing of the people and planet I serve.
This formed a dedication to clean, ethically sourced, organic ingredients and a pledge to donate 1% of sales to sustainability causes as a way of protecting the environment that provides the all-natural ingredients found in Clover blends. Oh yeah… creating great tasting, functional botanical blends to keep you feeling your best was pretty top of mind too! My passion is to help people around me live better life. Driven by creating great-tasting products that are good for you and growing a business that gives back to the community, My journey is about how many lives I can enrich.
I've learned everything I know about tea and herbals from my family's business, Mother Parkers Tea & Coffee. From birth, I was immersed in this world and built my knowledge on everything from where and how these agricultural products are grown and harvested, sourcing and production methods, and how to get creative and make innovative, new products out of hundreds of delicious and nutritious ingredients.
In my decades working in the family business, I built a passion for tea and herbal beverages, which eventually led me to form Clover Botanicals with Stafford. I am a Certified Tea Sommelier with the Canadian Association of Tea.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
My biggest accomplishment was having a vision of something and bringing it to life. There's no better feeling than seeing an idea flourish into a tangible product that brings joy to people's lives because it takes so much time and effort and so many iterations before launching it into the market.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
The hardest thing for me as a business owner is keeping up with all of the various marketing tactics and trying to ensure efficiency with my marketing budget. Marketing is absolutely necessary to make people aware of a small brand no one has heard of, and if you don't have a well-thought-out plan, it's easy to spend money on things that may not move the mark. I've learned this the hard way, but it's the toughest hurdles and biggest mistakes that make you strongest in the end if you are open to learning from them.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Have a solid, well-thought-out business plan written.
- Do as much product validation as possible before spending a lot of money on your idea, and use the criticism wisely to pivot.
- Also, before spending a lot of money, present to investors and get preliminary buy-in.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://enjoyclover.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enjoycloverbotanicals
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enjoyclover/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EnjoyClover
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clover-botanicals/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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