We were lucky to catch up with Adam Matricardi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Adam, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

So the idea for Elixir Kava Bar in Hollywood Florida, extended from my current businesses. At Soulful Herbals, my online herbal market, I sell euphoric herbs and teas including Kava. We do pop-up events in Hollwood Florida. This is where I met my partners and put together a team to create a kava bar focused on wellness and with incredibly tasty recipes for teas and Mocktails. Elixir Kava Bar with Immunity Juice Bar inside is my vehicle to promote Soulful Herbals & Plant Medicine Mafia and continue our wellness mission on a more personal level.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a writer and creative director, I spent years working on many of the world’s most prominent nutrition and wellness brands. Seeing a need for small herbal businesses to stand up against the big pharma tyranny, I launched Soulful Herbals and then Plant Medicine Mafia. I spent 6 years toiling on these brands in obscurity until I got a big break when one of my videos went viral on TikTok. I have had my social media accounts suspended and removed twice for promoting alternative herbs. But our mission continues!

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Soulful Herbals began as a side hustle. I began importing alternative herbs for pain for a family member, particularly the very taboo, opiate fighting herb, kratom. It turned out that this product was an amazing help to my friends and family members in chronic pain. I spent 4 years with my best sales month topping a meager $800. During the quarantine, I was faced with the freelancers dilemma. I did not want to keep visiting buildings and put family members who were immune compromised in risk. So I began to focus on my side business. Before TikTok killed the kratom hashtag, #kratom I had a video that was trending at 100k where I explained the strains. After they killed the hashtag and took down all the accounts using it, I ha to pivot. I began creating more generalized herbal and wellness content, while continuing to educate people on the truths behind the big herbal, food and pharmaceutical businesses. My hashtags #soulfulherbals, #plantmedicinemafia and #besoulful have generated millions of views.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Each year of Soulful Herbals existence there has been struggle. For those who don’t know, selling kratom is not easy. I have had my credit card providers pull out or go down without any notice. To market on social media or anywhere else is very difficult. However, we still give away thousands of dollars to people in need. We have gone through several credit card processors. countless social media accounts and can never catch a break with advertising on google. But we never stop because we are set on our mission. The countless positive reviews and letters we get for people we have helped keeps us resilient.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.soulfulherbals.com
• Instagram: @elixirkavabar
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-matricardi/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/elixir-kava-bar-hollywood
• Other: www.hollywoodkavabar.com www.plantmedicinemafia.com https://southflseo.com/ www.floatback.com

Image Credits
Dmitry Starkin Chris Castillo