Meet Su-Mari Hill

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Su-Mari Hill a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Su-Mari, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
It’s 4:34am. I have sourdough bread in the oven and I’m enjoying the early morning peace that is exclusive to this time before my 5 kids wake up.

I have been meditating on the concept of purpose a lot recently. I think we often intertwine the concept of purpose with career. They are two mutually exclusive concepts and I believe they should be treated as such.

My family have definitely been the driving force behind being an entrepreneur, taking risks, overcoming odds that i would not have thought possible. When you are not focused inwardly, when your focus is on a bigger picture, whether family or a social cause larger than yourself it is easier to keep going when the odds are stacked against you..

I don’t have a definite answer when it comes to what my career or purpose is but i wake up early to focus on the important things in my life. My family, my business, the people i come into contact with every day, the products I create and send into the world is just as important to me as the food I make daily for my family.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
We are an extremely overfed but undernourished generation. Our food contains less than 30-40% nutrients than the same products did 50 years ago. An orange today is not what it was when your grandparents ate it. Creating functional, better for you products lies at the heart of everything I do and for the last 15 years I have been focused on Tea in our business.

Tea is still the most consumed beverage in the world after water. In fact, 3 cups of tea is drank for every one cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, most of these cups are teabags and most teabags are made of nylon, plastic or bleached paper.
McGill University in Montreal released a study in 2019 showed that brewing 1 cup of tea at a temperature of 95 °C releases approximately 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastics into a single cup.

When we opened our Tea Shop 10 years ago our consumers did not want the harmful elements in most teabags. But we realized they found loose leaf tea cumbersome. What is a spoon of tea? Is a spoon of white tea or gunpowder green the same spoon? Simplifying loose leaf tea was a necessary next step in order to eliminate the harmful elements of teabags.

So we did. We created and patented a microbial binding that we use to craft the perfect single serve tea disc. We officially launched into the US in October 2022. We were featured on Oprah’s Christmas list 2022. We won US Today’s top foody gift for travellers. We’ve been featured on Nasdaq, Robb report and hundreds of other amazing platforms. Including an appearance on this season of Dragons Den.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
My journey as a mother, wife and entrepreneur have definitely come with a great deal of mistakes and lessons that have formed me into the person i am today. 3 sayings i use daily both in my personal and professional life is:

Don’t sweat the small stuff.
The world is a very anxious place and it can feel that the fleeting moments carry great importance. Most of them don’t.

Do what you have to do to do what you want to do.
I use to leave things to the last minute. I argued internally that the adrenaline gave me an edge to do it quickly. The reality is that i spent more hours thinking about what needed to get done than necessary. Now i make lists. Every morning I create an absolute must do list. A list for work and a list of things I need to do to help my family thrive and I tick them off before I do anything else.

It’s a new day.
This is the most important one. Yesterday is finished and the next 24 hours have endless opportunities. Mundane, mediocre days can become your everyday unless you actively choose to live this day with purpose.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?
iLOLA is more than just tea. It is an experience.

Our name “iLOLA” means to grow strong and we are definitely looking for people to journey with us that has the same mission.

We are starting to work with influencers, stores, boutique hotels etc. We have been mainly focused on B2C but are now expanding into B2B. The beauty of tea is that it can transform every moment into an exceptional one if we take a moment to saviour it and do it right.

Our website is www.ilolatea.com and we would love to hear from folks through our website or our social media channels.

Contact Info:

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