Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Steve O'Dell: Spilling The Tea on Entrepreneurship | Entrepreneurship | E17

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

In 2019, coffee has some major competition —> enter matcha, a green tea that offers caffeine without the crash. Not to be mistaken as just another trendy drink sipped by instagram models, the green tea is jam-packed with vitamins, anti-oxidants and good-for-you-stuff that can prevent cancer, improve focus, make your skin glow, promote relaxation and more! No wonder people love matcha so matcha   In our latest YAP episode, we chat with Steve O’Dell, the Founder & CEO of Tenzo Tea, an up-and-coming matcha tea startup. Tune in to hear him spill the tea on launching his company—from getting seed funding to building a brand— and uncover all the health and energy benefits that matcha tea has to offer.   Want to try some matcha? Head over to https://tenzotea.co/ & enter promotion code YAP at check out for 20% off Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

Hey guys, Young and Profiting Podcast has just launched YAP Society on Slack. It's a cool community where listeners can network and give us valuable feedback on the show. To join YAP Society on Slack, go to Bitley slash YAP Society. That's BIT.L.L.Y slash Yap Society. And if you're already active, share the wealth and invite your friends. Yap Society on Slack is sponsored by Compass HQ, a Slack app that gives insights to help your team work better together. Use Compass HQ to get detailed analytics, visualize communication patterns, and run surveys to collect input from your team.

Visit compasshq.com to learn more. Hey, young and profiters, I've got some great news. Our guest, Steve O'Dell, has gifted you all with 20% off all Tenzo T-T matcha products. Head to TenzoT.com and enter the code Yap to get your discount. You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. I'm your host, Halitaha, and today we're yapping with Steve Odell. The founder and CEO of Tenzo Tea, an awesome Macha Tea startup.

Stay tuned to find out his tips and best practices for launching a startup from getting seed funding to building a brand and uncover all the health and energy benefits that Mata Tea has to offer. Hey, Steve, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Hey, Hala, how's it going? Thank you so much for having me. We're happy to have you on. So you're the co-founder of Tenzo Tea. This is a tea brand that is taking L.A. by Storm. and you're revolutionizing the way that we think about energy and caffeine.

But before Tenzo, you were focused on a global venture fund called Ad Velarum. And before that, you started a few other companies. So did you always have such an entrepreneurial spirit? Help us understand what you were like as a young adult. You know, walk us through your journey, the different companies you started, and tell us about some of the leaps of faith you had to take in order to get here. Yeah, got it. I would love to.

So I would always consider myself a very curious. and passionate guy. But when I was a lot younger, I used to play volleyball. And so went to UCLA, I was playing on the men's volleyball team there. And while I was at school, I wasn't a great student, but I loved to learn. I got really into entrepreneurship, took a great class with a really good professor. And he was very encouraging and supportive. And then when I went home that summer, I started my first company with my cousins, actually, just doing odd jobs. And this all started with literally like my uncle handed my cousin an application to work at Burger King. And we were like, oh my gosh, what's going on with our lives?

We need to get it together. And so we met the next morning at a Starbucks and agreed to not leave until we had a concrete plan of a business that we were going to start. A few hours later, we had an idea to do odd jobs. And we ended up creating a flyer. We paid the mailman $10, which is actually highly illegal. Would not recommend doing that for anyone listening. But it really helped us out because we got about 10,000 flyers in people's mailboxes the

next day. And what happened was that spiraled into getting a lot of jobs. We hired all of our friends in town that were home for summer. We had like a crew of 15 working for us within a few weeks. And by all means, a really successful venture, a really small one for just like some kids. And then I went back to school. It's now my senior year at UCLA. And I was selling like portable chargers online. I started an on-demand printing company and kind of through those two things learned a lot about entrepreneurship and what like really it takes to make a great product and to kind of tackle a market. And then, ultimately, like halfway through my senior year, I ended up pulling the plug on college and like a big bet on myself and moved in on my buddy's couch to

start a tea company. Wow. So let's talk about you dropping out of college. That was a big step. And, you know, some of the world's biggest entrepreneurs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, they dropped out of college and successfully started billion-dollar companies. And actually, this is not an uncommon thing. So in 2016, more than 40% of all students who started at a four-year college, six years earlier had not yet earned a degree. And nearly two million students who begin college each year will drop out before earning a diploma. So clearly, you're not alone in making a decision like that. So how did you decide that you would drop out of college? What was that thought process like? That's a really good question. And nowadays, it is pretty common. But I really

just believed in myself as an entrepreneur and that I was going to make it in this world. I thought it was a really compelling story and I wanted to kind of put the pressure on what I was doing. I had some support in terms of I knew like how to start a business and how to make money essentially so I could live. And then I really just wanted time so that I could work solely on Tenzo and kind of just testing the waters. But it wasn't like this crazy decision. It was more like I didn't have any money. I was taking on a lot of debt. It's very expensive to go to UCLA out of state. and so I had already built up this kind of small network and skill set that I knew I could use to continue to grow. I felt like ultimately school was holding me back and getting a degree would only prove something that's technically already there.

Got it. So do you think that having nothing to fall back on like a diploma makes you a better entrepreneur? I wouldn't say it makes you a better entrepreneur, but it can. I have several friends who did similar things and it didn't work out. It's all about how you react to that. It's very stressful. It's very intense. There's a lot of pressure, both to pay the bills and to be emotionally happy. You have to work really, really hard. And it's not easy. But if you have the right attitude, you're willing to learn, you're willing to put in the time, no matter what ends up happening in the end, you can obviously make it. So you mentioned that when you first dropped out of college, you were staying on your best friend's couch for a while. Were your parents unsupportive? What did your family think about? that decision. So I have a pretty conservative family, two parents, four older brothers, and none of them are entrepreneurs. They all went to college and got to Greece, four years, you know, pretty standard. And I didn't initially tell my parents. I just kind of dropped out and I flew home what would have been my spring break, or so they thought, I told them. And it was pretty tough on my relationship with my

parents. I mean, now they're very supportive, but initially they were really upset. And the relationship, I thought it could have been severed, but thank the Lord, it's not. And now it's pretty well accepted in my family that I am an entrepreneur and that I'm going to be okay, better or worse. But in the beginning, it was really, really hard. So it's kind of good that, like, the bird that gets pushed out of the nest and you need to survive. Yeah. So for our listeners out there, what's your advice on taking effective risks and sticking to your gut despite any naysayers? Well, I'm a super firm believer in ignoring all the haters.

I honestly used them as motivation. Like when I dropped out of school, I posted this long essay on LinkedIn. This one guy named James Gill wrote this extremely negative response. I literally printed it out and taped it on the wall above my bed. And I was like, man, if there's one thing I want in life to prove James Gill wrong. And I really, really believe that you should follow your heart and stick to that. And if you do that for a long enough and you're willing to put in the sacrifices,

then the universe and the world will reward you. Yeah, I think that's true. Things tend to just work out if you work hard and you're passionate and you're moving in the same direction. Yeah. Let's fast forward to Tenzo Tea. Tell us where it all began. How did you get an idea to start a tea business? Where did your love for matcha develop? Yeah, that's a great question. It really started with something very simple. I googled what is the healthiest form of energy on the planet. And at the time, I was an entrepreneur and I was an athlete my whole life. So energy was so important. Pre-workouts before the gym, a morning coffee, maybe like a Red Bull at night. If you're like setting for an exam or whatever, you need to get work done. And so a lot of people do that. And when I Google this, I found macha. And when I drank it, I didn't feel like this need for more caffeine all the time.

I felt like I had very consistent energy. My productivity increased. Literally, like, everything about my life was better. And I knew that I was treating my body the right way, being like I'm putting good stuff in it. And so if you look at a Red Bull, some of the ingredients, you have no idea what that is. If you look at a pre-workout, it's like impossible to read the label and coffee is even questionable. And so it was like, do I really want to live my life knowing that I'm going to need all this energy? Do I really want to live it where I'm kind of harming my body?

So seeing the meaningful impact it made for me, learning a lot of the things that I had learned in my previous startups, Macha was the perfect business. Very cool. And we're definitely going to get into all the benefits of Macha. first I want to focus on the business side because a lot of my listeners are either young entrepreneurs or considering starting a side hustle. And so I think we can really pick your brain on some of the business side. So this is your third or fourth company and you've always founded it with someone else so that your third or fourth time with a co-founder. How do you choose your

business partners? What in your opinion is the top two or three qualities that you look for in someone that you want to found a business with? By far the most important quality is is the strength of your relationship with the other person. It's not perseverance or any like the stereotypical ones. It's literally the relationship because startups are really, really hard. And you're going to get in disagreements. You're going to feel like the company should go different ways. You're going to put a lot of pressure on each other.

And one of the best things that I can say with 100% confidence about my relationship with Rob right now in T's at 10s of T. It's that when we fight or get an argument or debate something like heatedly in a few hours, there's no unresolved tension. We're moving on. And so having like this highly developed, like emotional kind of skill set is really, really important. You can understand the other person rather than attack them. And there's no ego involved.

And it's like, I think that that's really truly found in the relationship. And I'm really grateful to have Robbie on my side. But I would really look for like strong emotional strength and toughness and grit, things like that, that you know that this relationship is going to last because most startups, guy from co-founder breakups. Yeah. And so you and your co-founder have actually been friends since you were 12. Is that correct? Yep. And so most people usually say don't mix business and personal, but you didn't listen to that. I'd really encourage everybody to look for the people that they know and trust rather than the random web developer. That's the only kid in their class at college.

So Tenzo T is a really catchy name. What's your story behind it? So with Advilorum, that means according to value. That's another business that Rob and I own. But for Tenzo Tea, we wanted something that was meaningful. It was simple to pronounce, easy to spell, wasn't really confusing. The tea and tea alliteration, Tenzo tea is nice. And then it also means Heavenly Monk in Japanese, which is one of the paths to enlightenment in a Buddhist monastery. More specifically, a Tenzo as a noun traditionally, is the person in a Buddhist monastery that would prepare food and drink for the monks to meditate. And you also have a very nice brand. So beautiful colors, imagery, catchy names for your drinkers like Tenzo Tribe. Tell us the process you took with developing

your brand. That is a loaded question, Hala. To be totally honest, it's been a long journey of incremental progress. We didn't know anything about branding when we started. We had absolutely no design skills, no copywriting skills. We really didn't know what was going to stick. And so a lot of it is testing and just improving over time. And it's also one thing in the beginning when you don't have any money. And it's just important to recognize. And one thing I'm dealing with even right now, I'm trying not to compare ourselves with these bigger companies that have a million dollar budgets and stuff.

You just need to make the most of what you can right now. And I'd highly recommend for young entrepreneurs out there are people just starting, that they're extremely specific about what they want to do and just to do those things truly great. And once you have that, you want to do what I call stacking. It's like you want to stack your growth. And so you have a really great website and kind of you stem that out and maybe really great packaging. Once you have those two things down, then you can move into like a tender tribe type thing. But it's really like this process of incremental progress and making iterations over time and just being willing to improve and listen to feedback. And from my understanding, you guys started in

2016 and secured 250K in seed funding. So first, can you just explain what seed funding is for those of my listeners who may not be familiar? Yes, of course. Seed funding is basically the first round or the very beginning amount of capital that's injected into a business to help it grow. It's typically done by friends and family or maybe small angel investors. And then after the seed round, you have Series A, which is typically larger, maybe institutional type money. So if you've heard the word venture capitalist or like Morgan Stanley, a bank. And then you go to series B, C, D, and they continue to go up as the company grows. So tell us about the process you went through to raise that initial funding. What was that like? And do you have any best practices or learnings that could help

others be successful at it? Definitely. Man, I mean, I wonder if you can sense the pain in my voice, but raising funding is very hard. And when you're from Rochester and New York, there's not that many people that you know I could write a check that was bigger than like a thousand dollars. And so we had to go through this process of making relationships and meeting people and earning trust over a long period of time. And so to do that, I learned a lot along the way about Tenzo and myself and what I thought the business was. And I love fundraising now. It's very exciting and fun. But when you're just starting, I would really seriously think about what you need in terms of financial resources and then making a strategy to only go and get that

set amount and then using that well to get more funding and it's kind of like you proved you can spend $10,000 as well. Here's $30,000. You prove you can spend $30,000 as well. You get $100,000. And it really just keeps going up like that. I would encourage most people to not raise a seed round at all. I would try to get like a small bank loan or line of credit and just show sales growth from like zero to a thousand to 10,000 in a few months. And then you can go and talk to angel investors. And there's a lot of resources and people that are willing to help. But you really need to put yourselves out there. And if I could recommend one piece of advice on starting, it would just be to ask, literally ask everyone that you think might know someone that could invest if they want

to invest. And if they say no, say, oh, you don't want to invest. Do you know anyone else that could be interested? And then it kind of like spirals and snowballs into this thing. And if you have enough runway, you'll be fine. So with the seed funding, you got this money from everyone. How did you decide what you were going to offer them in return? Yeah, another really good question. We did it on a convertible note, which is a common method in an early stage startup to get capital. And a convertible note, it doesn't set a valuation. And so you have a loan and then the loan turns into equity at a certain time or event. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that does make sense.

And then so what do you suggest is the best way to use seed funding once you've secured it? I know every business is different, but is there some like standard things that you should kind of use that initial investment for? Yes, definitely. The number one priority for you or for any business person is to increase revenue. And so how I think about it as like a pyramid and what's like hovering above the pyramid is like brand values and culture. So like you never want to compromise your integrity and who you are as a brand. and the culture of your company. That's first and foremost. And after that, you want to sell. The reason why is that selling will A, allow you to either get profitable or B, it will allow you to

raise more money. And so you really need to reinvest or invest in the things that are making you money in that work. If you're building an app or something like that, then it's all about users. I guess the meta-level concept is like identifying the core KPIs of the business and investing in those. That's really good advice. That makes total sense. So previously you alluded that angel investors might be a better idea when you're first starting out rather than using seed funding. So what's your argument for that? Yeah. Angel investors are definitely the best in the beginning. And I would even say like even now for Tenzo, we're raising our series A. And I still don't want to raise institutional money,

like meaning BC money. And that is strictly because angels are typically easier to work with. They're not like ruthless capitalists. They truly believe in what. what you're doing and why, and they have skin in the game and they want to see you succeed. So they give you better terms with your financing and let you retain more equity and things with that. But I would highly recommend working with angels for as long as you can. And eventually, that's just not possible when you're raising like tens of millions of dollars until you need to go to institutional money. But I would go angel as long as you can. Cool. That's very interesting. Okay, so tell us about a big challenge that you had with

Tenzo. Walk us through that and how did you overcome that challenge? At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate,

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I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify. I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments were set up super easily, and none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does, because Shopify is just so, intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my masterclass to over $500,000 in revenue in our first year. And I'm launching some new podcast courses and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person, just like the

millions of entrepreneurs that they power. You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and set up as fast with built-in AI tools that help you write product descriptions and edit photos. Plus, marketing is built in so you can create email and social campaigns, easily. And as you grow, Shopify can scale right along with your business. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. Great question. So probably the toughest thing that I ever dealt with is to give a slightly more background

on the story, we ended up raising $650,000 total over the last year. And that was truncated across the whole year under really the same terms of the convertible note. But around early August, we were speaking with two potential investors, both extremely successful. Everyone on the podcast would probably know their names. I'm not legally allowed to say it, but. Oh, come on. They were going to give us, I know, I'm sorry, I would love to you, honestly. I can't. I can't. They were going to give us $1.5 million of these two groups. And what happened was about two days before we're going to sign the term sheet. And eight days before we run out of cash, literally zero, we're bankrupt.

Wow. Eight days before we're bankrupt, they pull out of the deal. Oh, boy. Yeah. So I remember so vividly getting this call and I walked out of the office, I was like, oh, great, we're going to talk about a time that we can sign the term sheet and get the money. That's what I'm walking into this call thinking. And I remember it's like a five-minute conversation.

They just say, hey, you're too small. We love what you're doing, but we're not going to invest anymore. We're sorry for wasting your time. And they're like, we don't want to talk about it. The decision's final. Let's stay in touch. So I was sweating bullets. You know, like I must have looked like a ghost.

I walked back into the office and I got my co-founder Rob and I was like, holy crap. I might have just killed our company. But we didn't. And how we got out of the problem was that over the next 48, 72 hours, I went on this insane learning cycle about alternative financing. I didn't really know a lot about lines of credit or loans or like your debt to income ratio and things like that. And so Tenzo had really no debt at this point relative to our revenues. So I went to Chase Bank and they immediately gave us a $40,000 loan. And then I went on this company called Cabbage. Cabbage.com is a credit line.

And they immediately gave us $60 more thousand dollars. And so then I was like, oh, whew, like we have some breathing room. And so we basically saved the company using alternative financing methods when the investors backed out and it allowed us to continue to grow. I literally personally guaranteed all this money for the record. So it's exceptionally risky. And if it failed, I would be in serious trouble financially. but it didn't and it allowed us to grow. And then we ended up closing around at the very end of the year with a quarter million dollar investment from the former CFO of Dr. Pepper Snapple. Wow. Which was the perfect strategic investor. And then about another $100,000 kicked in based on his commitment. And then we closed the round shortly after.

Wow, that's amazing. It's a theme with you to take effective risks. You just go with your gut and make it happen. Yeah, I call it my heart, but I'm following my heart and my beliefs. And I think just having an indomitable will is a really powerful thing. And I tell this to investors, nothing is going to stop me. I'll have to be dead or completely incapacitated for Tenzo to stop. So in a similar vein, something that seems close to your heart, Tenzo Tea also has a social entrepreneurship angle to it. For every bag you sell, you give clean water to one person for one year. And so for our listeners who might be interested in doing this sort of thing, how does the mechanics of that work? It's honestly super simple. We work with an incredible nonprofit called The Thirst Project. They are only a few miles away in West Hollywood. And we reached out to them and said, hey, we started this company to give back. And we're doing that right now through our product. And it's very nice that we can provide a positive impact on people's lives by giving them healthy, clean energy. But we want to do more. We met with their family.

And it was pretty simple. We literally write them a check every month after we get a total of the bags ordered. And they are building wells in third world countries. And so we work with them. It's honestly so easy. Cool. So it's just like a collaboration and you just pick that social venture. How did you pick them? Great question. They were really close by. The founders were really cool. They're also pretty small and they specifically work with youth. And they work in some pretty cool regions around the country. And then besides that, like water, we felt was a very foundational piece of even making matcha. Like, you can't make it without water. And so on that same note, like kind of the last big reason is that everyone, except for maybe people in Flint,

Michigan, everyone in the U.S. takes water for granted. And it's extremely depressing, but it also, I think instills a sense of responsibility in yourself, knowing that there's 800 million people on planet Earth that don't have access to clean water. Yeah. Kind of makes you second guess what you're doing with your time. And it only costs 50 cents, by the way. Like, I will share that openly. 50 cents is one year of clean water. Wow. For people in these communities. Wow. So next time you, I don't know, waste 50 cents, like think about that and what that really means. So our team, like I have two quarters taped onto the window above my desk. And I see it every day. And it's a very good, like, kind of centering piece. Yeah, that is. That's so nice that you're doing that. So I know that

there's, you know, a philanthropic angle to this, but it's also really good marketing. So can you talk about how social entrepreneurship can help a business grow? Yeah. So for Tenzo specifically, we're really actually not trying to use it as like a foundational marketing aspect. That's In terms of like social marketing, I guess is the word, it is really powerful. And I think that goes back to Seth Godin's concept of world views. And a certain subset of the population believes in clean water and sustainability and philanthropy. That's one of their worldviews. They adhere to that and they make decisions based on that. And so by providing a social aspect to your company, you're technically tailoring to those people's worldviews. So it offers up a new market and you can definitely acquire

customers through that way. Cool. All right. So let's spend a little time on matcha. This is the product of Tenzo tea. Macha has been around for a while. It was part of traditional Japanese tea ceremonies for hundreds of years. And it's really popular with millennials. It's all over Instagram and tea in general is popular amongst millennials. 87% of millennials report drinking tea. And matcha is definitely the It Tea of the moment. And that's mainly due to its energy boosting and health benefits. And I heard that samurai warriors used to consume matcha because it's energizing without any side effects. So why is it good for us? And what are the best ways to consume it? So when we originally started, like I mentioned earlier, it was about finding the healthiest form

of energy. And like you mentioned, it goes back centuries to ancient Japanese society. And that's kind of where the name Tenzo comes from as well. But different from other teas is that Instead of steeping it traditionally in a bag, you actually blend it directly with whatever you're drinking. So you get 10 times the health benefits, 10 times the amount of caffeine. And really drinking the product is all about the caffeine and the health benefits. And so contrary to coffee or Red Bull or pre-workout, which you can't even literally read the labels on most of those things, macha is extremely pure and it doesn't give you any jitters or that shakiness or the crash or that feeling of man like i really need more of that like you know like that feeling when you drink a cup of coffee and like you get a little bit shaky

and then like an hour goes by and you're like wow like i'm starting to crash or need another cup of coffee that doesn't happen with macha you get a very clean like focus that happens over four to six hours and so that's one of the reasons that monks and samurai used to drink it centuries ago goes because Samurai would drink it before battle for that energy while also staying focused and monks used to drink it so they could meditate for long periods of time. Very cool. I actually am so excited. I've never tried matcha before. Oh my gosh. I'll send you some as soon as you get off this call. Oh, yay. That'd be awesome.

The second part of your question, which is regards the best way to drink it or consume it. Now, one of the best parts about mantra is that there is a lot of ways you can do this. and it really depends on how you get your energy. So it's different for everybody, but for me, I like espressoes, cold brews, red bulls. I wasn't like in the vanilla latte group or the paprikaino group. And so I like to drink macha straight as what the Japanese call the Koetra, or Americans would think of it as like the espresso shop version of a matcha.

So it's just two ounces of water, one gram or more of matcha. And then you take it like as a shot. I'd maybe take those a lot, but I'd highly recommend trying that if you're going to work out or you're in the mornings, head to work, or in the office, or going to class. Just take a shot of matra. It's awesome. Also, you can mix like a concentrate, which is also like that the shot I just mentioned in pour over milk and form a latte. A lot of people who make smoothies will put it in their smoothie so they can get the benefits, the health benefits and the energy there. and my mom actually uses it as a frosting dye when she wants to make green frosting during the holidays.

Instead of using a green food dye, she uses mancha. You can make tons of super cool foods with mantra actually. Very cool. And I think I read that it's high in antioxidants, right? Yeah. So it is. It's the highest amount of antioxidants per gram of any edible food or beverage in the world. So what that means is antioxidants kind of fight free radicals.

You can think of those as like the bad guys of your body. So they help fight free radicals and keep your body really healthy. That affects literally every portion of your body, heart, brain, muscles, you name it. Yeah. And I think that free radicals can lead to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, heart attacks. So getting your antioxidants is very important. Yes, I know, right? Very, very important.

So just drink mantra. you can handle that. Yeah. So how about the skin benefits? What are the external benefits? Okay. So I personally don't apply face masks too much, but some of our customers do. And they will say it makes them glow or shine, things like that. And it's actually extremely easy to make. You just need a little bit of water, some honey and mantra. And you need to rub it on. It's super simple. We actually have how to make it guide on our website if you want to check it out. Young and profiteers. I know there's so many people tuning in right now that end their workday wondering why certain tasks take forever, why they're procrastinating certain things, why they don't

feel confident in their work, why they feel drained and frustrated and unfulfilled. But here's the thing you need to know. It's not a character of law that you're feeling this way. It's actually your natural wiring. And here's the thing. When it comes to burnout, it's really about the type of work that you're doing. Some work gives you energy and some work simply drains you. So it's key to understand your six types of working genius. The working genius assessment or the six types of working genius framework was created by Patrick Lensione and he's a business influencer and author. And the working genius framework helps you identify what you're actually built for and the work that you're not. Now, let me tell you a story. Before I uncovered my working

genius, which is galvanizing and invention. So I like to rally people and I like to invent new things. I used to be really shameful and had a lot of guilt around the fact that I didn't like enablement, which is one of my working frustrations. So I actually don't like to support people one-on-one. I don't like it when people slow me down. I don't like handholding. I like to move fast, invent, rally people, inspire. But what I do need to do is ensure that somebody else can fill the enablement role,

which I do have, K on my team. So working genius helps you uncover these genius gaps, helps you work better with your team, helps you reduce friction, helps you collaborate better, understand, why people are the way that they are. It's helped me restructure my team, put people in the spots that they're going to really excel, and it's also helped me in hiring. Working Genius is absolutely amazing. I'm obsessed with this model. So if you guys want to take the Working Genius assessment and get 20% off, you can use code profiting. Go to workinggenius.com. Again, that's working genius.com. Stop guessing. Start working in your genius. What's up, young and profitors.

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So speaking of your tea, your leaves are sourced from Kagoshima, Japan. How did you decide to get your leaves from there? And what are your best practices for sourcing product effectively? This is kind of like the brand question where what we were doing when we first started isn't what we're doing now. And it's really a process of incremental progress over time. What I mean by that is when you're first starting and you have no resources, no money, no network, you can't hop on a plane and go to Japan for three weeks and try to find product. So literally all we did was we went on Google and we typed in where to be. buy macha. And then we got it from some guy in Arizona who owned a private labeling company.

And we bought like 10 units. It wasn't the same macha reason now. Honestly, it wasn't even that great. Very average. And then after like six months and going through him, I was trying hard to figure out where is he getting it from. So he wouldn't tell me. And then I eventually did find out that person when we went directly to them. So this is now a Japanese company. And I think this was maybe 10 months into business. We now had some resources. And so we flew to Japan to visit them and their tea farms.

And this is probably my favorite story in the whole history of Tensea, but while we were in Japan, on the very last day, we were in the Kyoto train station. And we had time to kill. And so I googled where is the close? closest tea farm. And what happened was we took a train. So we're there. And it wasn't a tea farm. It was just a tea shop. And there's an 80-year-old Japanese couple. And I didn't speak any Japanese. They don't speak any English. And so we were like trying to Google translate and pointing on maps of tea farm. Like where is the tea farm? No luck. So Google it again. And there's another one like

It's like a 20-minute walk away. We're like 10 minutes into that walk. All of a sudden, a black SUV pulls up. The driver's side window rolls down, and it's the old man that we've just seen in the shop. He motions to us get in my car, you know, like waving. And so we got in, and for the next few hours, we drove around visiting all these different tea farms. Wow. It was like we're out of the movie.

All of us were just starstruck. So after that happens, we give him a business card, and we're like, thank you so much. If we can do anything for you, let us know. A few hours later, we get an email from that guy's boss, who turns out to be a T-Masser, and we ended up meeting him a few months later, and we created what is now Tenzo Ceremonial Grade.

It's a proprietary blend of matcha that we have, and you can only buy it from us, and that's what we sell today. But it was kind of this long journey with a lot of serendipity, luck and it's kind of just what I was saying earlier, if you follow your heart and put yourselves out there, the world will answer the call. That's amazing. That's inspirational. Everything's meant to be, right? Yeah, it is. So is. So it's. So like I said before,

matcha is really blowing up. The global matcha market size was valued at $2.62 billion in 2016, and it's expected to witness a 7.6% compound annual growth rate increase from 2017 to 2025. How do you plan to capitalize on this market? Without going into too many specifics in case any of my competition is listening. Really, though, nothing crazy. We want to focus on doing what we're already doing really, really well. We want to be the leader online on Amazon and our own website. And we want to run a great subscription business.

We want to treat our customers really exceptionally well and build a great brand that lasts. Cool. So you were explaining to us before how you got interested in monitoring. It was basically you love the product. Did you do any research on the matra market or did you just decide, you know, I love this product. I'm going to start this business. No, of course I did some research. So I also knew the staff that you just posted, the 7% compound annual growth rate. And what that told me was that, okay, this is a potential market that's going to grow. Maybe I could start a business in it. But one of the things I had learned when I was in college working on a company called

co-to and i hate saying this now because it sounds so dumb but we were an on-demand printing company so literally students would pay us so like print something for them and deliver it wherever they wanted sounds crazy and what i learned was that the world's moving digital so why would you start a printing company and the meta lesson there is that you want to build a company that's aligned with the way the world is moving you want to ride a wave the notion there is like mark zuckerberg is thought of as the next bill gates but he didn't build Microsoft he built he built Facebook because social networking at the time was the wave. And all he did was create the best platform to ride that wave. And so when I looked at Mata or whatever my next business idea was going to be,

I wanted to make sure that my timing was perfect. And so when we started TENzo, there was maybe three other Mata companies, some small players, but it still is a very small and very new market. It's not matured at all in the United States. And so we literally like brought matcha to Los Angeles cafe scene. When we were when we started in Long Beach, like there wasn't any matcha anywhere. And then when we closed like the first 20 or so accounts, that was like, boom, like it's here. And then like matcha bar is doing pretty well. And so chaw chaw matcha is also a pretty big deal.

And so really it was more about the timing and just trying to ride that wave. and then the other like tangible takeaway that I'd give to anyone who's just starting. There's a great website called Google Trends. And you can see the aggregate search data for any keyword. So when I did that for Macha, it was like the curve was like far up into the right. So growing really fast. And we are so pretty new. They're still pretty early in the market.

So I thought that with my competitive spirit, work ethic, I could compete and win the market. Very cool. I love that Google Trends. I think that Steve's on my team. She's our marketing girl. She uses Google Trans for us. Nice. That's great. Yeah, it's super helpful. Okay. So you did great. You started this company. And so far, you've been pretty successful. But if there was any advice that you could give to yourself, you know, third year of college when you were just starting this business, what would it be? What would your advice be to yourself back then? I would love to say to myself that you're on the right path. And why I say that is that too many people look at great risks that eventually worked out is, wow, this person's a genius. They knew it's going to work out this whole time. Like, how are they such a visionary?

But in the end, like being real, I didn't know this is going to work. I had no idea that I'd be able to start a match company. In the end, I was truly wondering, can I do this? Am I going to be strong enough? Can I figure this out? Can I learn financials? can I learn operations? How do I import something from Japan? How do I close a cafe? And even the fact that I dropped out of school is a massive risk. And in the end, looking back on it, it makes sense.

And I say it so casually now, like, follow your heart. But that's a lot harder when you're really in the heat of things. And you lost trust. You're a lot of friends and family. And that brings in a lot of self-doubt and that's concerned and self-hate and all these questions. And so if I had as strong mentors as I do now back then, I would have been in a lot better situation, like emotionally and for my own sanity, honestly. So that'd be my piece of advice, just knowing that I'm on the right path. Yeah, and I think that's great advice. Okay, well, Steve, I enjoyed this interview so much. How can our listeners get in touch with you and buy some matcha? Yeah, so the best way to reach out to me is actually on LinkedIn. I'm super active there. You want to add me on LinkedIn. It's great.

shoot me a message, I respond to every single message that I get, unless it's like an automatic bot that's a terrible, dumb thing, you know. But any of like the legit ones, or even if the bot is legit enough, I respond to everyone. So if you have questions or want to talk more, please don't hesitate to reach out there. And if you want to buy matcha, head to tenzot.com. We have great subscription. We have teaware blender bottles to mix your match on the go. And I would love for everyone to try match. And if you have any things, feedback, let me know. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Steve.

Thank you, Holly. It was great, great, great being on. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting podcast. Follow Yap on Instagram at Young and Profiting. And check us out at Young & Profiting.com. And now you can chat live with us every single day on our new Slack channel. Check out our show notes or young andprofiting.com for the registration link. And if you're already active on YAP Society, share the wealth and invite your friends. You can find me on Instagram at YAP with Hala or LinkedIn.

Just search my name, Hala, Taha. a huge thank you to the Yap team. Tim, Danny, Christian, Steve, Stephanie, Nicholas, Ryan, Kayla, Shiv, and Julian. Catch you next time. This is Hala, signing off.