We recently connected with Katherine Harris and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Katherine , thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I contribute my work ethic to nature, nurture, and sports. I worked in commercial real estate in downtown San Francisco a week after graduating college. I realized there that I have natural grit: firmness of mind and spirit. As for nurture, my parent’s are both entrepreneurs and owned businesses specializing in food & beverage. Their mindset and ambition was a daily influence growing up. Lastly, I played competitive soccer through grade school, high school, and into college. I learned discipline and self-control that I tap into daily; the book ‘Hidden Potential’ by Adam Grant expands on how participating in sports can be connected to high performers.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I own and operate two companies: True Tea and Upper Left Roasters. For True Tea, I import teas from the highest quality tea growing regions around the world. I focus on sourcing mostly organic teas direct from small, family-owned farms. We want to educate tea drinkers about the humans growing, harvesting, and processing the tea and why specialty tea matters vs. commodity tea. We have multiple exciting announcements coming up that will broaden the brand’s visibility so please give us a follow us on Instagram @truetea.pdx or sign-up for our newsletter via our website www.trueteapdx.com for updates!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I would say the three qualities are perseverance, fearlessness, and confidence. As entrepreneurs, we are paving the way for the unknown so we’re setting ourselves up for inevitable hardship. We have to be able to stay the course and persevere through any and all obstacles. We also take calculated risks that can be terrifying, but bravery is taking the calculated risk anyway. The confidence is important to trust oneself and your decisions; you need to be self-assured so you don’t get swayed easily (different than collaboration).
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
Our wholesale business has grown exponentially and we’re proudly partnering with coffee shops and restaurants serving True Tea in Idaho, Washington, California and Oregon. We’ve also expanded the True Tea team. Over the last 12 months we’ve grown from just myself to 6 team members. True Tea is in it’s infant stage of a business and it’s important that we be patient and focus on creating a foundation and a functional operation to sustain growth.
Contact Info:
- Website: trueteapdx.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truetea.pdx
Image Credits
Heather Amistad
