Tina Karras: Her Journey from Making Music to Making Vodka

What this episode covers

Tina Karras is an independent writer, musician, and a long-standing prominent buyer in the alcohol industry. Southern California is the largest market in the USA for alcoholic beverages, and Tina is well-connected in all aspects of the industry. After procuring sponsorships and streamlining the bar program at the legendary Roxy Theatre, she began working with the concessionaire Best Beverage Catering, which services major music festivals like Coachella and Outsidelands, music venues like The Roxy Theatre, Universities like Stanford and UC-Berkeley, and much more. Her start in the alcohol industry actually came by accident when Tina moved to Los Angeles with literally one guitar and two suitcases to pursue her dream of being a singer-songwriter. Working in restaurants and, eventually, music venues was Tina’s way to pay rent, and now she’s using that experience to run Tina’s Vodka. Tina’s Vodka is made from organic corn, non-GMO, American-made, fantastically smooth, delicious, and at a good price. This Episode’s Heavy-hitter’s: Growing up working in her family’s restaurant, Tina learned the grind of not having certainty in her life as an entrepreneur at a really early age. Tina has a mix of different musical inspirations from when she was younger, including classical music like Beethoven, greek music, big bands, and disco! When creating Tina’s Vodka, there was another company sitting on the trademark for the name Tina in the alcohol space. Tina was able to make changes and work through the legal challenges to use the name. Tina’s world was turned upside down when after years of creating her debut album and maxing out credit cards to start Tina’s Vodka, the pandemic hit just as she was about to co-launch both. Considering the circumstances of the pandemic, Tina actually selected more positive songs to help uplift people that were down on their luck. Check out Tina's Vodka: https://www.tinasvodka.com/ If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review:   https://ratethispodcast.com/thepozcast #thePOZcast is brought to you by our friends at Interseller – the prospecting + outreach platform of recruiters and sellers. Whether you’re doubling down on business development or recruiting talent, Interseller does all the heavy lifting of finding contact data, automating the email and follow-up process, and syncs all that rich data into 20+ CRMs and ATSs. Reach out and get going in a 2-week *free* trial today and let them know you heard about them from Adam on #thePOZcast.Check out a free demo today! https://bit.ly/2Fbm/BZ Thanks for listening, and please follow us on Insta @NHPTalent and Twitter @AdamJPosner.eth  For more, check out www.thePOZcast.com thanks!