We recently connected with Sally Olivia Kim and have shared our conversation below.

Sally Olivia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you share a customer success story with us?

One of my most touching moments I’ve ever had in the past 4 years of launching was when I received a note from a customer who had been battling cancer.

Even prior to her diagnosis, she was quite active on tiktok and engaged with our account quite a bit– which explained why I had such a connection to her. She then posted more regularly after her diagnosis, detailing of the whirlwind of her emotions, her health concerns, how her life would change, and lastly, her worries of her beauty “diminishing” throughout her treatment. I teared up watching so many of her videos of her process and chemotherapy journey.

Then, almost a year later, she celebrated being cancer free finally— and a few weeks later— she had posted a video detailing how she got her health and beauty back in the areas she had thought she lost it.

It made me feel so beyond happy to read her comments about how our products helped her regain those elements— thanking us for sending her our products, and wrote “Crushed Tonic has definitely help me with skin and hair. After all the treatments, I felt so ugly. Now, 1 year after chemotherapy, I’m finally starting to feel like myself. I’m so glad my hair is growing back.Thank you for your products.”

This video felt more powerful to me than any top line revenue I have achieved. It was more empowering to me as a founder and author than any other event I’ve experienced — than any major hotel, cafe, airline, retailer, business partner we have won over.

Though beauty should be one’s last concern in struggling thorough health– it is obviously such a huge part in how we heal through it all. The changes we see in ourselves as we heal, is something that we cannot ignore. We all can agree that beauty comes from within. However, we also know just how much our skin and hair look on the outside can affect and impact how we feel. Our self confidence and self esteem, as separate and compartmentalized as they should be from how we look, are obviously so inherently intertwined to how we feel about ourselves. And as we all know, our confidence is the spring board in how we tackle the world everyday.

Knowing that our brand was a part of our customer’s healing journey in even the slightest way, brings the biggest smile on my face. Reminding myself of this feat is the only thing I need to have in my heart, to keep going.

Sally Olivia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Crushed Tonic is an anti-aging ingestible skincare beverage brand formulated with marine collagen, probiotics, biotin and flavored with popular superfoods like coffee, matcha, turmeric, lucuma, mango, acai and more. Since its launch in 2018, we have partnered with brands like Sephora, Equinox, Anthropologie, KITH, FabFitFun, Free People, Erewhon, JetBlue and more! Our customers are hard working women and men in their mid 20’s who value the health of their skin and hair holistically and not just from the outside.

My journey started when I got burned from a cooking accident. The oil melted the skin off both of my arms instantly, and I had to turn to a ton of prescription ointment and silicone patches only to find out none of it really did much for me. Unimpressed by the options out there, I ended up turning to the internet to find ways to heal my skin.

After some research, I discovered that ingesting collagen was extremely beneficial for our skin (and hair, bones, joints, list goes on). I was super fascinated, especially because I always thought collagen was something that was topically applied or injected— and started drinking it everyday. After just a couple weeks, I saw incredible changes not just on my burns, but my entire skin, head to toe, and also my hair. Turns out, collagen is something that’s in our own bodies — actually the most abundant substance in our bodies second to water—and our bodies stop producing it as much when we are in our mid 20’s. Drinking extra collagen, however, offsets that decline, returning your skin and hair to what used to be.

I then tried to evangelize it to my aging parents and family, and this was where I saw the problem. No one wanted to take collagen as often as I did, for how it tasted (and to be fair, most collagen powders do have an unpleasant taste– it is often gamey tasting, like any other protein powders are); and had I not been burned, I probably wouldn’t have drank it so regularly either.

But knowing how amazing it was for you, I HAD to have my parents take it. So I began to flavor each mix with specific superfoods that they liked, so they would drink the collagen with the beverages they were already drinking everyday anyway (matcha for my mother, coffee for my dad, and hot cacao for my brother).

And after tasting and testing for months, getting it so that the collagen was virtually unrecognizable in the flavor, and seeing my friends and family drink Crushed Tonic raving about how amazing it tasted— that’s when Crushed Tonic was born.

My background is in finance and strategy— having worked as an investor at a late stage venture capital firm, I was exposed to a lot of great start ups and business founders. I learned a lot about what it takes to build a profitable brand, and studying all the various business models in all the different and unique industries fueled my passion for entrepreneurship at an early age. I loved rolling up my sleeves and brainstorming with these entrepreneurs on how to get to the next level— and always knew that I would be launching my own business as well at one point.

Still, my decision to be an entrepreneur wasn’t always supported– my parents were extremely against me foregoing a more “stable and predictable” career paths. They wanted me to pursue medicine / law instead— and when I first said screw it and started working on Crushed Tonic and my book The Collagen Glow, I think my immigrant dad had a semi-heart attack. Now, he tells me is that the best decision I’ve ever made was to not listen to him— but that wasn’t until very recently.

Going against my parents’ expectations wasn’t the only problem I had since launching Crushed Tonic two years ago– I had problems manufacturing, fundraising, the list goes on– but I’ve persisted and made sure to always remind myself that I am the luckiest to be even given these obstacles to push through!

What I am proud of:

I am a published author and sole founder and owner of Crushed Tonic, a bootstrapped and profitable company with a 7-digit valuation.

My book is a collagen-based cookbook, of smoothies, smoothie bowls and soups and a collagen guide 101, a synthesis of research and anecdotes that will help those who have never taken collagen before, to be able to integrate it into their everyday diet. Collagen is traditionally suggested to be taken with coffee and I wanted to set out to disprove that. When you get used to collagen and how to use it, you can add it to anything and everything, watermelon juice, butternut squash soup, and protein bites!

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

This might be the most ridiculous interview answer you’ve ever had, but I put 100% of my life savings into my business! I had to work full time at another company for a year prior to.

After my first round of production of a million units, I had $8 left in my bank account. It was a super surreal, and insane moment– and I still wonder to myself what was wrong with me! 🤣

It somehow ended up working out, and we annualized over $1M in our first year!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

This might be a controversial POV, but I had to un-learn that my happiness in starting a business, was about making money.

To be fully transparent, it was never about the money for me to begin with; I started my brand not to generate millions and sell for billions, but to achieve freedom from a 9-5 (though having been in finance, an 8-hour work day was a rare one). I vowed to live the rest of my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, not behind a computer screen in an office, but traveling.

However, I lost sense of this perspective when my business started gaining momentum. And unfortunately, this caused me to be behind the screen again– but from 4am-2am everyday this time. It became endless, and I started ignoring my health, my family, my loved ones– and looking back, I am not proud of who that person was for those years.

Only once I lost my grandmother, who I was the closest to in this world, I regained that perspective.

I battled tremendous grief in 2 years following, a lot stemming from regret that I was not able to go see her, and say good bye to her (by the time I had landed in Seoul after hearing she had been admitted to the hospital, she was gone).

This perspective is something I wish more entrepreneurs would talk about.
Entrepreneurship is not all just butterflies and rainbows; it’s actually the opposite.
It is an incredibly lonely journey, with many many mini-heartbreaks.

It’s not worth all of your health and happiness– and balance is possible.

As someone who has experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows in this career, please don’t ever lose focus of YOUR perspective, why you started it all in the first place!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.crushedtonic.com
• Instagram: @crushedtonic
• Facebook: @crushedtonic
• Linkedin: @sallyoliviakim
• Twitter: @crushedtonic
• Youtube: @crushedtonic
• Other: tiktok: @sally.crushedtonic and @crushedtonic