May 16, 2023, 12:00 p.m. EST
Evy entered Emerson as a marketing student and left an entrepreneur - for life! She and Georgette discuss the cultural inspiration behind Evy Tea, and get candid about navigating the entrepreneurial reigns as a woman of color, the challenges she faced raising capital, and one thing she wouldn't compromise on. Recorded on April 23, 2023.
Transcript: Season 6, Episode 1
Evy Chen
Georgette Pierre:
What does it mean to make it big? Well, it depends on who you ask, and we did. Welcome to Making it Big in 30 Minutes, a podcast for, by and about the Emerson community. You're about to meet an Emersonian who's making it. Making a living, making a difference, and sometimes, making it up as they go. I'm your host and alum, Georgette Pierre. If you like what you hear, subscribe and share with your friends, and meet me and other Emersonians over on Emerge, the only digital platform exclusive to the Emerson community. Go to emerge.emerson.edu for more.
Georgette Pierre:
Evy Chen was missing home when she came to Boston to attend school. Having grown up in Fujian, the southeastern province of China and one of the country's main tea regions, she knew tea. But her experience with tea culture in China was completely different from how people viewed and consumed tea in the US. Her entrepreneurial spirit mixed with her traditions led her to create Evy Tea, a cold brew tea served in a variety of flavors. But most importantly, with the tender loving care and craft that she wanted people to experience. She was even named the pioneer of cold brew tea.
Evy admits, during her time at Emerson and building this company, that she still had a lot to learn. Evy and I got candid about navigating the entrepreneurial reigns as a woman of color, the challenges she faced raising capital, and one thing she wouldn't compromise on. Here is Evy Chen, on Making it as an Entrepreneur.
Georgette Pierre:
Hi, Evy. How are you?
Evy Chen:
Good morning. How goes it?
Georgette Pierre:
How goes it? Yes, I was so excited to talk to you, because I was like, you are living this entrepreneurial life, and you literally have your products in stores and things. We'll get more into that, but the way I like to warm up and start things off is, what's a lighthearted or quirky way to describe your profession in one sentence?
Evy Chen:
Oh geez. So, I always say that I'm a CEO, which means “see everything O”, so that's what I do. That's the glorified version of being an entrepreneur, it just means you're doing everything.
Georgette Pierre:
I love that. That's the first time I've ever heard it put that way. I love, love, love that. What surprises you most about the work you're doing now?
Evy Chen:
I think it's really how much school doesn't prepare you for this stuff, I think that's number one. And number two, and I was actually having this conversation with another professional the other day, about how different it is for a woman to be an entrepreneur, and a woman of color to be entrepreneur, and a woman of color who is first generation to be entrepreneur. All those nitty-gritty things, it's difficult to navigate. And so, I would say that's probably what caught me off guard the most of, how much harder and longer this was going to take me.
Georgette Pierre:
I love how you navigated the layers. You're an entrepreneur, what is the product that you sell?
Evy Chen:
I am an entrepreneur running the CPG space, which is consumer packaged goods. And I sell cold brew teas in a can. They're ready to drink. If you think of cold brew coffee, I'm one of the ... they call it pioneer, but one of the first to introduce the category. We have a national distribution currently, with 2,000 stores and above. That's what I do, I sell tea.
Georgette Pierre:
Talk to me about the non-traditional upbringing I had read that correlated to your own path of creating a better tea, essentially, for the marketplace. What led you to this? Was there some influence from the family aspect, as well, and where you grew up?
Evy Chen:
Absolutely. This is my homage to my heritage, in a way. I left home when I was 14. This story gets told a lot, and my story has continuously evolved, which is cool. When I was a kid, I was a very quirky, weird, just active kid, born in Southeast China. And it was not a great environment for me to be creative and thinking outside of the box all the time. My family are deeply rooted in the tea growth side of things, so tea gardens and traditions very deep within my family's blood line.
When I was 14, my family decided that this is probably not going to be the best environment for me. It was either having me shaped into a very different person, and really follow the rules. Or send me somewhere else, and get me the space to be who I was. So that's what happened. It was my family's decision to send me away. I left home when I was 14, went to Europe for a few years, and then landed here in the States. And I have been in Boston ever since, thanks to Emerson.
Honestly, the biggest inspiration was Dunkin' Donuts. I was so culture shocked the first time I saw people with this giant mug in their hands, a bucket, and I was like, "What is that?" That was a while back, and at the time, artisanal, small batch, higher quality, ready to drink tea really wasn't a thing just yet. It was mostly very mass-produced, very cheap, sugary-filled products. That's not tea to me, they didn't taste like tea to me.
Georgette Pierre:
I agree.
Evy Chen:
The idea was really simple, it was just to create something that tastes like tea. And honestly, put this particular culture in the driver's seat, and saying that, "Listen, we're selling tea here. We're not selling sugar. And this thing has community, it has soul, it has people behind it."
Georgette Pierre:
Oh yes. Okay, yes. You know how when people are like, "Let's meet for coffee?" I started just changing it up, because I don't drink coffee. I'm like, "Can we meet for tea?" I lead with tea, I am a tea person. I am definitely a tea person on the hot side, but even still, I love that you tapped into your cultural tradition, an homage to where you're from, around tea. I'm curious, just a fun way of looking at it, what's your tea personality? If you had to name a flavor that was you, what would that be?
Evy Chen:
Yeah, that's a good question. I would say that I'm probably a high mountain smoked oolong.
Georgette Pierre:
Is oolong like white tea? I can't remember.
Evy Chen:
No, oolong is not a white tea. Oolong is more between a green and black, and it really depends on how it's processed. It's similar to coffee or dark roasts for espresso, there are light roasts for pour overs. It just depends on how the tea are handled. But typically, it's a pretty niche product, I would say. We drink this a lot back home, but here it is rarely seen. I carry my tea with me, like my own stuff with me for a while now, just because I can't find it here. Specifically, that's what I would refer to, a high mountain, grown, smoky flavor, oolong.
Georgette Pierre:
I love that. My family is from the islands, from Trinidad and Tobago. And there's always this thing about ginger, ginger tea. But not the fake ginger, give me the grated ginger.
Evy Chen:
The actual.
Georgette Pierre:
That stews when it hits hot water. I like peppermint, I'm very non-caffeinated tea. I really like non-caffeinated, like that's my thing. But yes-
Evy Chen:
Kudos to you.
Georgette Pierre:
I like some of your flavors that I've saw too. Going back to when you were saying that you were coined the pioneer of this space with cold brew, how did that make you feel? I'm sure when you got into this business, you were thinking, "I just want a product that I would want to drink." And then you end up pioneering this space. How did that make you feel? And did you imagine being in that space?
Evy Chen:
That's such a good question and also an interesting question. So a couple months back, I was helping out Emerson's E3 program, the entrepreneurship program. And some of the students asked me very similar questions, and my honest answer was, honestly, back then, I was trying to solve my own problem. Which is just not a great place to start because having a product is not the same as having a company. So you can have the best product in the world, but it's everything else around it. It's the team, it's cash, it's infrastructure, it's marketing, it's branding, it's all those sort of things that really adds up to be a company.
So I honestly was not expecting this business to be this complicated. I'm an Emerson grad, so math was not my thing. But math quickly became my thing because everything was penny-pinching. So it was an accidental, I will say, accidental discovery that I found the market within food service, specifically, that was hugely untapped. And having such a large margin in such large market to play with, gave me a lot of room to be creative and was able to do something that was different than the other major branded tea.
So how does it make me feel? It's been really hard and long journey, to be honest. And it's fantastic to be celebrated personally and professionally for doing that. But it was hard, I don't think ... if I were to go back to do this again and I'll be like, "Yo, this is really hard." If you were to try to solve your own problems, just get your friends, get some people around you and have a retail shop, have something that's a little smaller to get that community. Because that's what I was seeking, that's what I was after. The family is the community, it's a sense of I belong.
And now 10 years later, I'm still a very small, small player in CPG. But it felt good to sort of know that this was a company and a product, and at a time that nobody else in the world could have created other than me. And take the ego out of that, it's really unexpected. But a lot of people have came to me and said, I've inspired them to start their own businesses. And having seen a founder and seeing a CEO that wears a different color of skin and wears a different color of attitude, stirred something within an industry. So hopefully this was part of my legacy, is to unintentionally tapped into the CPG side, the space that didn't exist before.
Georgette Pierre:
I was looking at your packaging, I was like, oh, this is so badass. You better have your name on this packaging on the can. I was so ... because to your point, a lot of times when I studied entrepreneurship in undergrad, and by the time I got to Emerson, it was grad school, integrated marketing communication. But the one thing that they said as an entrepreneur or even studying, they were like, in order to have a "successful business" you have to solve a problem. What is the problem that you're looking to solve?
And it was interesting for you to expand upon, yeah, it's one thing to say that. But the legwork to actually solve this problem in a real way, it takes time, it takes funding. And I had read that you had landed a million dollars in funding, I think maybe a couple of years ago. And I don't know if you're looking for more funding, but what did you learn about yourself in the process? It's not just you coming out of pocket and paying for these things. You need real capital to be in that space. And so curious on what you learned about yourself knowing that entrepreneurship is not for the faint at heart.
Evy Chen:
Another really good questions. So overall, I actually raised closer to 4 million in capital.
Georgette Pierre:
Okay. Yes.
Evy Chen:
Yeah. So the one mill was actually one of my very, very first earlier rounds. And I have likely done every single possible fundraising there was. I've done farmer's market, I've done Kickstarter, I've done Angels, I've done debt, I've done ventures. So I've done a whole bunch of different ways to get capital.
And thinking back, that's where I kind of lost my advantage a little bit because I didn't come from a business background where intentionally going into this with a very clear idea of, okay, how hard is this going to be? I didn't raise enough capital and I never had enough capital. And that's still a very real challenge to, I would say majority of people of color founders in the industry, to be honest. Because to grow you need to have more cash than you need. And to have more cash than you need, you need to have the right connections and all that good stuff.
So I would say that the funding portion was likely one of the most difficult piece out of this entire building a company side. How do you allocate cash? How do you hire? A lot of that decide on how quickly your company can move. And that's the one thing I wish I knew a little bit more back then.
Georgette Pierre:
Is there a piece of advice tattoo to your heart, something that just sticks with you? Whether it's personal or professional.
Evy Chen:
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, this is just my model and it's sort of how I do it. There are two things. One is, I don't work with AS, so I don't work with people that bully me. So in the industry, a lot of times you will see people with power, people with money, connections, whatever. They know that you need things. So I don't work with people that make me feel small. So that's sort of like principle number one. It's actually really, really hard to do. I'm sure you relate to this at some point, it happens quite often.
Georgette Pierre:
It does. Yeah.
Evy Chen:
To be able to say no…
Georgette Pierre:
No, it does. Yeah.
Evy Chen:
Yeah. It requires a decent amount of gut, I will say, to say no. And I've turned down more capital than I have taken in, to be honest. Because of the person behind the dollar sign just wasn't the kind of people that I allow myself with. That's one.
And secondly, it's also a really hard one to do, which is authenticity. I would like to think I've kept my authenticity and curiosity since the age of three until now. I'm the same person prior to the business and after the business. And that had taken a huge amount of mental toll, as well. But that is the virtue that I live by, is you live once and the journey is only as fun as people that's around you. So if you are an authentic person, you tend to attract very similar crowd and very similar energy, and that makes the journey worthwhile.
Georgette Pierre:
Oh, I love that. I think what really stuck to me was this playing small, because I've been navigating that as a black woman. There's always oppression everywhere. And so, how do you push through not being in a space where people are just naturally oppressive? It's innate. Whether it's the culture, the environment. So I love that you led with that first, because I think people ... it's really important for people to hear that, hey, you still have to set your own boundaries, even if it's the money that you need. You have to trust that you're going to still get-
Evy Chen:
Correct.
Georgette Pierre:
What you need, and you don't have to necessarily work with assholes to what you need, essentially.
Evy Chen:
Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better, honestly. The boundary setting portion, I would say have been one of the most challenging things I had to navigate professionally and personally. And 10 years later, I mentor a whole bunch of younger entrepreneurs want to be, and that's one thing I tell them is that we can't change the way we look and we can't change the way that we are. But we can decide what we're going to put up with, and that's going to decide where we're going to go.
Georgette Pierre:
If you could go back in time to your Emerson self, what would you say?
Evy Chen:
Interesting. Emerson self. I was such a scared kid when I was in Emerson. I would say like, don't be scared. It's okay. Because I was too normal back then, I would think. Out of all the creative types and weirdos in Emerson, I was a very typical kid. And I wish I talked to more people because 10 years later you see alumni everywhere and they're like, where? Yeah, it's like-
Georgette Pierre:
And subtly too, right? It's real subtle.
Evy Chen:
Yeah. It's really, really interesting. And as the school profile starts to rise, we'll have more people getting awards, getting on bigger stages, so on and so forth. I was very much of a marketing kid, so I just hang out with marketing people. I should have branched out a little bit more to go out with film kids and things of the sort. That's the one thing I'll probably do a little differently.
Georgette Pierre:
It's funny, at the time of the recording this interview with you, I devoured who Moved My Cheese, the book, Who Moved My Cheese. And something you said made me think about one of the major lessons is accepting and embracing change and being willing to pivot. And I think when you said that you were a little scared, I think I also didn't allow myself to really, really experience certain parts of my life, even from grad school and even personally. And even though we can't go back in time to change those things, it does make me think about when you start to reflect on what would I have done differently? It's like, well, whatever I would've done differently, let me start doing it now.
Evy Chen:
Correct.
Georgette Pierre:
You know what I mean?
Evy Chen:
Yeah.
Georgette Pierre:
Okay, if I was-
Evy Chen:
For sure.
Georgette Pierre:
There, if I was this, I was that. How are you going to allow yourself to experience a little bit more life or be a little bit more open? And so that's what I thought about when you said that you would've done ... just talked to more people and just hung out and done things differently.
Evy Chen:
Yeah. And it's also interestingly, as time passed by, you start to realize the time you just don't get back. The company can get bigger, you can get older and the time, you have what you have. And I've also had a few health scares over the years. And those sort of things sneak up on you, because mentally speaking, I think a lot of us are so tense because there's a lot of pressure out there to be a certain way, to do a certain things to be at a certain bucket. And Emerson gave me this attitude of it's okay to be different. Like, we are different to begin with. And so up keeping with that and just seeking out your own weirdos, I would say I would have ... you know what I mean? So just identify, who are your weirdos? And just collect them.
Georgette Pierre:
Some of the stories that I've told over the last three seasons that I've got to host this wonderful podcast, everyone will talk about like I'm still friends with people that I went to Emerson with. This is like 30, 40 years later for some of them. So Emerson is definitely a very special place in kind of discovering yourself in that way.
Interesting things stick out in our minds from school. Some useful, some nodding, yet we can't seem to forget them. Is there anything you learned at Emerson that you didn't deem relevant or important at the time, but it turned out to be?
Evy Chen:
Oh, that's interesting. I think I'm going to go back to the word, allowance, and I'm going to break that down a little bit. I think my upbringing was very Asian, an immigrant. Meaning I'm the first person that arrived in this country and I'm the first person to do a lot of things, even within professionally. First person to create a category, first person to have blah, blah, blah. The list goes on.
And then all that requires courage. And I didn't really give myself the allowance to do that. So I braced through a lot of those situations in life, but doing it, thinking that I couldn't have done it. Thinking I'm going to try it, but my likelihood of success is so low, so do it anyway. But if I would have given myself the allowance and say, you know what? It's okay. If I fail, that's okay, and let's just do it anyhow.
And that's a very different way of dealing with the same situation differently. And Emerson is a perfect place to do that. I think everybody within the community are good and excellent at providing that allowance to be who you are and do things that's outside of the norm. So personally speaking, that's one thing I'll carry with me is that we'll always have that Emerson flair with us regardless of how we wake up.
Georgette Pierre:
I like that.
Evy Chen:
You can tell if you see people pitching, you can tell. So that part, I think I'll always carry with me is that amount of allowance that Emerson has built into me, that allowed me to build upon. And I don't think I would gotten that from any other school.
Georgette Pierre:
Yeah, Emerson flair, I got to use that. I like that, that Emerson flair. That's not my word. I stole it from Lu Ann, the cheer at E3.
What's one mistake you're glad you made?
Evy Chen:
I think ... let me put this this way. I think, again, I didn't give myself enough credit and therefore I took a long way to do things. Does it make sense?
Georgette Pierre:
Yep, yep.
Evy Chen:
I didn't ask enough. I didn't ask for help enough, I didn't express enough that I was suffering. So a lot of times I look just fine doing those sort of things. I think that's a huge mistake. We got to have trust in ourselves while also trusting people around us. Believe that this is a community, you give and you take. And that's one thing I'm still teaching myself nowadays is to learn to ask for help and learn to be vulnerable in terms of your shortcomings. And that is I think one thing people don't do enough.
Especially the older we get professionally, it's hard to ask for help. Your community, where weirdos go, women of color, we have our own asks that we can't ask anybody else. So we have founder asks that we can't ask anybody else. But those are the small things that all add up to this very intricate relationship that carries you of how you move throughout the world. You have this open attitude of, I don't know everything, and that's okay. There are people around me I can ask questions of. So I would say that was the one mistake I did make is I didn't ask enough and I didn't stand up enough to say, "Hey, I'm struggling, I need help."
Georgette Pierre:
That's really good, as far as asking for help. I know I would constantly get these nudges on like, Georgette, you're not supposed to do this alone. So I really believe in the spiritual connection. So I'll sometimes say, God, my ancestors. And I have heard and felt like they're just waiting for me to ask for help. And the moment I would ask for help, Evy, I would literally get a resolve in that instant or within a few minutes.
But even with us being in this physical world, I know that that is something that I am actively putting into practice too, asking for help. So I love the candidness. I think it's so important for people to really hear about your journey and the things that you are moving through, that you've struggled through. That, yes, just because you have your stuff in stores, doesn't mean that you're still not on another set of task or challenges to continue expanding.
Evy Chen:
Yeah, we're sort of going back to the point that you just mentioned about moving through the world, even though you've got to a different place. That fact doesn't change. I just want to sort of insert that portion in there, is even though now I'm mentoring students, I'm being mentored by other people that have gone further than I have. People that have built companies that's 80, 100, 200 million dollars have the same struggles. They're just at different scales.
So that particular relationship building portion and asking for help portion doesn't change ever. And even when it comes to a lot of the business things like pitching for stores, pitching for money. You're actually asking for help in a different way. So I think having that particular mindset of delivering your asks differently would take you to places, as well. Because we're all humans and we want to help people, but not just in the business front of things. We want to help the person behind it, too.
Georgette Pierre:
Something that I run into when I had started season four and going through season five. I found myself getting discouraged and not necessarily having the juice to keep going. And so it inspired me asking the question to guests, how do you keep the momentum going when you're not always feeling it, when you're not always inspired, when you just don't have emotional capacity?
Evy Chen:
That's a fantastic question, and I think that we should tell the stories a little differently. Is that I don't think anybody steps into the world and say, "Hey, you know what? I'm a hundred percent today." I don't think I've ever heard that. We are all little children in our hearts, in grown up bodies trying to figure out what to do. There's just a bunch of us running around. And I think the idea of, okay, we're full battery-ed and then we're burned out. And then we refill the battery and we go burned out again. It's just not healthy narrative.
I'm not a mom, but I've heard this from a lot of moms. You're just consistently tired and distracted. But you have to pick yourself up and cruise even at a low energy level to get through everyday life. So systems could be helpful, if you have a established system in place, that you're going through muscle memories, the motion of it. It sort of gets you a little further versus you're just completely driven by will. That's one thing.
Self-care being taught a lot as sort of go take a bubble bath and things of the sort. But spiritually, you have to fill your cup, too. For some, that's religion, for some, that's music, for some, that's moving your body and dance, for some, that's food, for some, that's family. I think the spiritual part is a huge driver of how full you can be as a person. And if your cup is always half full, I think that's a good place to be.
I don't think it's necessary to be driven towards, if I'm not feeling it, I'm not to part. Because everybody else, I think struggles with the same thing. We're all just trying to do 60%, 65%, 70% of it and call it a day. So the perfectionism, the pretty things, the PR things that you see, the things on social media, on newspaper, whatever. That's a tiny, tiny fracture of what this person's going through. And of course, that looks great. And of course, that looks like they're [inaudible 00:28:26] the whole time.
So I tend to be a little bit more real about that. And I will say that you're going to be tired, you're going to be distracted and you're going to be stressed out. And most of the time you're desperate, silently desperate. And that becomes norm. And then you sort of learn to navigate. And if you're the kind of person who says, I have this thing I want to do, I just got to figure it out how to do it. Then it doesn't matter how long it takes you, as long as you get there. That's okay. So that's sort of my attitude of thriving when we're not filling it as, yeah, we're all that, everybody is that. Build a system around you, build your support system around you. Whether it's therapists, your friends, those sort of things. And they all add up and they will all take things away and help you get there.
Georgette Pierre:
I like that. Yeah. No matter what you do now, your experience at Emerson has influenced who you are today. Every institution leaves its fingerprint on us, whether we use it, acknowledge it or not. What mark did Emerson leave on you?
Evy Chen:
I think Emerson has set me up for being a entrepreneur for life. Like listen, I walked into Emerson thinking that I was becoming a marketer, like a marketing agency person, an advertising agency person. I walked out the door being an entrepreneur. I won the prize at Emerson College, and that's what kick started my career as an entrepreneur. And I think once you get there, you don't go back anymore. I would say Emerson has a huge influence, a huge role to play in that. And also, again, the allowance of being creative. As long as you figure it out, that's okay. And that has been a huge cornerstone for me of problem solving and getting through things. So I'll say those are probably going to follow me for a good while.
Georgette Pierre:
Oh, Emerson. What's one thing you like to try next? And why haven't you tried it yet?
Evy Chen:
Funny you asked that. I've actually just very recently achieved it. This thing that I thought I was going to try, but I will never get it. So I never thought I was a math person, I was a numbers person. But I just got accepted into MIT's Sloan Fellowship program.
Georgette Pierre:
Congrats.
Evy Chen:
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. So that was a thing that I thought I was going to try it, with very little chance of being successful at it because I was so far out. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm not a stamp person, whatsoever. But being accepted into the program was a huge pat on the back for me. And this Emerson entrepreneurship journey led me to a very different place. So proud of that particular achievement.
Georgette Pierre:
Kudos to you. That's amazing. Congratulations. Oh-
Evy Chen:
Thank you.
Georgette Pierre:
Oh, I love that. I love that. And lastly, to top it off, Evy, what does it mean for you to make it? And how will you know when you get there?
Evy Chen:
Another really, really amazing question, like kudos to you.
Georgette Pierre:
Thank you. I can't take all the credit for all these questions. But yes, these are some great questions.
Evy Chen:
This is one thing that I talk a lot about with other business leaders. Because when I started out, I thought making it means having a product. And then when I had a product, I thought making it meant getting into stores. And then when I got it into stores, it just doesn't stop. Just that particular achievement, that line is always moving. And being an high achievement person means you're chasing after the high. You're not necessarily chasing after the status of what is it like to ... what does it feel like to make it? Not, what does it look like? What does it feel like to make it?
And I'm finding out from other mentors and people that are a lot more successful than me, that they have the same feeling. That doesn't change. So I don't think making it become such an important benchmark anymore versus the earlier years, for me. Right now, my personal definition of making it is keeping that particular authenticity that I think I have carried with me throughout my life, to continue to live that. Treat people with kindness from the bottom of my heart, because I want to.
And using that person to emerge myself into a world where I can find meaning by helping other people. So taking the ego out, that's a little bit would be my next step of making it. It's great to have your name on a can, it's great to see your face on a poster. Those are all great things. But I wonder what else I can do to impact the next generation. So making it, for me, now has become living in my own skin comfortably. And hopefully other people who see me living this way say, "I think I can do that and that feels a lot more comfortable than pretending it to be someone that I'm not."
Georgette Pierre:
I love hearing the answer to this question because I think everyone ... one, everyone's responses are vastly different. But they're still a through line of, making it continues to expand, the goal post continues to move. And I like the connection of like, you just feel your way through. It's less about these possessions and more about what's the legacy that you want to leave? Who is able to come through behind me after the road that I was able to pave? So Evy, thank you so much.
Evy Chen:
You're so welcome, it was so much fun.
Georgette Pierre:
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