Zhena Muzyka On Living A Purpose Filled Life - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #172

Hello, this is Joe Polish and I'm here with Zena Musica, who I'm going to interview and she's the founder of Xena's Gypsy Tea. She's an inspirational speaker to women nationwide. She's celebrated for her work in fair trade business practices. Zena was named a Country Living Woman Entrepreneur and has received the Enterprising Woman of the Year award and the Socially Responsible Business Award, among others. She lives in California with her family. She does all kinds of amazing stuff. You can find her at xenatv.com, which is Z H E N A TV and Zena, this is a very interesting story, how we're here. I literally got to tell where we're at. It is a Friday night. It is after 10pm And I saw you give a talk at Changing Hands bookstore because my dear friend Renee Aria introduced us and said, you got to go see this woman. You have this book, Life by the Ingredients for a Purpose Filled Life of Bottomless Happiness and Limitless Success, which I have not read yet, but I totally look forward to it because I just saw you give this really great content rich talk about your life experience. And so before I continue to ramble, who is Zen? Who are you?

Well, some people would say I'm a warrior.

Yeah, I would agree.

But I am an activist and a mom primarily, and a businesswoman. I'm an entrepreneur to my core. I love business. I love how it can heal and change the world more than I think any other thing can, even governments. And so I'm a pro. Business pro. Socially responsible businesswoman. And I'm really excited about sharing some of my secrets in my new book.

Yeah. And here's what I think is kind of cool. I have actually consumed your product that you actually invented without even knowing it until I first met you. And this I feel is going to be the first of probably many interviews and interactions we're going to have in the future. But to back up for people that have never, maybe they've heard of your company that you founded, but you have this great story. So go back to when you were a single mother and how this all started because you have such a great, inspiring entrepreneurial story that's filled with so many lessons in how to. And I'd love to have our listeners not only pick up the business lessons and stuff, but really you were at a point of desperation at times where you had to figure things out.

Yeah. So I was a single mom. I had Sage the day after my 24th birthday and he had a birth defect in his Kidneys. And the doctors kept sending me home because they thought it was colic and I didn't have health insurance. And when I tried to get health insurance for him, the birth defect that he had actually was considered a pre existing condition. So I wasn't able to ever get him insurance. So I had to actually start a business, pay for all of his operations, all of his medical bills, and have him with me because he had special needs. And so I started the tea company. I had a passion for tea and potatoes. I studied herbs in Peru with a group of ethnobotanists and shamans. And my grandmother was gypsy from the Ukraine. She taught me that plants and botanicals can fix any woe physically, emotionally, spiritually. So when I was at this moment where I basically was at my core, and I said, dear God, please show me what to do, I literally had a vision of a gypsy tea party. And I'd been writing a book about my gypsy grandmother, so it was all fresh in my mind, all the imagery and color and passion. I put together two really unusual things, Gypsies and tea. And I started throwing belly dancing, tea leaf reading parties in Ojai, where I lived, and then in grocery stores. And the first one, 300 people came. We sold out of tea in an hour. It was spectacular. And I realized I was onto something.

Yeah, well, first off, me being a marketer, when I hear that you actually you had your first tea party, it's kind of funny, huh? Tea party. And you've not heard that before, and you had 300 people show up, but you sold out the tea within the first hour.

Yeah.

Okay, so a big gathering. So this was not just about the tea, but it was around community, it was around bringing people together. And from what I've learned of you since, I guess we've been hanging out now for going on about four hours now. So when I first heard of you, you know, it really made me think that, wow, you've created kind of a movement here. And so you're not just a person that developed tea, but you really went into it. And you went to Peru. I mean, you went to Sri Lanka. I mean, you went to all these different places to kind of explore. But let's just talk about that one party for just a moment because I think that's an instrumental, like, turning point. When you did something like that, what light bulbs went off in your head about what was capable of.

It was so cool because as soon as I. And I have a chapter in the book called Collaborate to Be Great, because I Believe in collaboration being probably the most valuable business tool. But what I found was I started telling people I want to throw a gypsy tea party. And they were like, oh, my God, that sounds really fun. And so one woman said, oh, I have a jewelry line. Can I bring it and exhibit it? And I said, absolutely. And then my belly dance troupe were like, we want to dance there. And I was like, absolutely. And then all these other belly dancers wanted to come because they heard all these other belly dancers were coming. And then my friend John Jonathan McKeown came and played guitar, and he's like. His dad was a nitty gritty dirt band guy, and he, like. So we had all these world class. We ended up with painters, jewelry makers, tea leaf readers, pomas tarot readers, like four different belly dance troupes. It ended up becoming a community gathering and affair and a showcase of their greatness. And I just made the tea and served it, and everybody got to shine. So it was spectacular.

Well, you. You said in your talk that you ended up taking it all over the. You even took belly dancers into grocery stores because you didn't have any money to spend on marketing. And so you were a really great marketer before you even probably thought about writing sales copy or doing any of this stuff. So you said it made the news until you got into trouble. What sort of trouble did you guys get in?

Oh, God. So we were bringing belly dancers into grocery stores, and it was going great. I mean, I was getting pictures back because I couldn't be at all of them. So I was getting pictures back of belly dancers in, like, the Midwest, like, juggling cantaloupes with the produce guy, and people were having a blast. And the tea sales were great because people were like, whatever they're having, I want because they're having so much fun. And this is so unexpected. Well, then we were actually throwing a big private gypsy tea party at a big natural grocer's headquarters. And some of the girl. One girl felt uncomfortable with all the skin, and she threatened sexual harassment suit. And it was really. Yeah, it was like the biggest natural grocer. And so the. The guy who was in charge who just actually retired, he wouldn't even tell me. It was just all of a sudden, like we were shut down. Like, wow. Yeah. And I was like. I was like, please, Michael, you know, you got to tell me what happened. What happened? He's like, oh, it's so stupid. I don't even want to tell you. I'm embarrassed, but I gotta shut him down because I never. We didn't even think about this. You know, it made someone feel sexually uncomfortable. And I was like. Then I realized, you know, for me, it had already served its purpose.

Yeah.

It had already gotten us a reputation. We had made every magazine. We had made all the trades. I mean, everyone knew our name already. And, I mean, at that point, I had spent nearly nothing, so.

Well, so that's quite innovative. Now, you made another comment, too, when I heard you talk where you said, tea has grown 9,000 miles away, and you wanted to really explore and learn where. And I think the greatest thing about you and what I've discovered about you so far is that you are an industry transformer. I mean, I talk about that ingenious network industry, Transformers. You actually transform this industry by being an advocate for fair trade. So let's go to those beginnings where you first started learning everything you could about this subject. Because my friend Dan Sullivan says, when you start a business, there's two things you need. You need ignorance, and you need cour.

That's perfect.

Yeah, it is. And you strike me as, like, going, you know, I just, you know, I heard this message of, you know, gypsy tea, but beyond that, you had to go into an arena that you had no background in, and you were doing it when circumstances, taking care of a child that had special needs. And you were resourceful, but you also cared, and you really do care, I mean, from everything we've talked about. Because what our listeners don't know is we've spent the last hour and a half here just talking. I mean, you've got a really big vision here. So talk about that.

Well, when I got my first crate of tea, so I'd been buying from a broker. I figured out the whole tea business in the first few months. And I'd been buying from an importer, just little batches. I talked him into it because I didn't have enough money to buy a whole crate. And so when I got my first crate of tea, I opened it up and I realized how much tea was inside of it. And then I just had the sense that I. Whoever did this, I have to know that they're taken care of. It was almost like it was a message in a bottle. And this is talked about a lot in the book. I got the call with that first creditee, and then it took me years to earn up enough money to actually get over there. I think it was about two and a half, three years. So I got over to India and Sri Lanka because I kept hearing these horror stories that the workers didn't have health care, they didn't have maternity leave. There was no guaranteed child care. There was child labor. They were exposed to toxic chemicals. And I thought, I'm not going to be part of the problem, I'm going to be the solution. So when I got over there and I saw one particular garden at Dulcena which is featured in the book, they had fixed all of that. They had actually ended poverty for their workers. They were doing organic agriculture, biodynamic agriculture. They were teaching the children a fearless way of living. They had seven schools on the property and they were actually teaching equality. And, and the women were running many of the programs, which was unheard of. And so I thought, well, I'm only going to buy from them. And the alternative, I saw what the alternatives were and I couldn't stomach it. So I said, I'm going to only buy from them. I'm going to increase my volume so much that they're just going to have to keep buying up land around them to increase more and actually make this the status quo in business. So I went about doing that and I pressured a lot of other tea companies in the industry and you know, became very close with the fair trade organizations and that was how I became a change maker.

Yeah. Now when you were bringing this up to other companies, what sort of resistance did you get in the beginning until they finally, you know, followed suit and said, you know what I mean? How did you sell them? Because you're an effective salesperson.

Absolutely. Well, I'm really short. And they'd be like, who is this bossy bitch, like walking up to us at a trade show, like telling us what we have to do, you know. But then I was fairly relentless and I just would say, I remember I'm not going to name the company because they're huge and owned by Starbucks. But anyway, I basically went up to the founder and I said, you've got to be fair trade. I said, I. Because it's volume driven. So it's a euro or a dollar, $1 50 for every kilo of tea that you buy. I mean they can be around a dollar. That's it. And the tea workers are working so hard they're only making $1.35 a day. But with fair trade, the worker gets an extra $1.50 and it goes directly into a pool for infrastructure, clean water systems, education, healthcare, all of that. So who wouldn't do that, right? Well, this guy was like, absolutely not. We're too big to do that. If we would have done it when we Were small, it would have been a small check. It would have been built into our model. But we're so enormous, if we go fair trade now, all of a sudden, it's going to blow our whole budget. I realized, okay, the way to be socially responsible is to build it into the business model from the get go or adjust accordingly later because you don't want to lay off half your people just to go fair trade. I just had conversations and I sold and sold and sold and sold. I was relentless. Then all the buzz around my, you know, other people jumped on.

Right, right. And that's what it actually takes too. I mean a lot of times it's, it's just the credibility that is built in the process of just, you know, staying persistent. And staying persistent.

Yeah.

So you actually showed some photos of what a non fair trade housing looks like versus fair trade. Talk about how this actually increases profitability by adding more value to the workers. Because, you know, I'm a guy that, you know, when you take unions in the U.S. i mean, I think a lot of them just in a lot of ways hold their employers hostage. I mean, so I have a lot of mixed views on taking care of how you go about taking care of the workers. Where someone loses really badly in the quote unquote, you know, the bureaucracy of it. But in this particular case, you're talking about just people that are living on.

Like $1.35 a day. So what's beautiful about fair trade and what's also not beautiful about it is that it's market driven. So say one year I wanted to be fair trade or a company wanted to be fair trade and then the next year they decide not to be. So they can be buying from the same garden. But if they stop paying the fair trade premium, they're no longer fair trade certified. But that garden that was depending on that money has to end infrastructure build. So say, say they had a project to build 20 new houses for the workers and all of a sudden the trend of fair trade, people stopped buying it. Well then it would stop. So it's not unionized. It's completely by choice. That's what's beautiful about it. So that's where it takes education. So you can't do it just because it's a trend. Well, you could, but you have to actually believe in it, make a commitment for it and educate your consumer on why it's important. So that was how I did it. I did it. Educate, educate, educate. I was tireless in that.

Yeah. So you are very good. I believe at telling the story and influencing people. So now in your book, talk about what people will learn when they read this book, including myself.

Well, each chapter is short enough to sip. You can have it in your morning with. Read a chapter with your morning cup of tea or coffee. And so I know because everybody is so busy, but I wanted to give them an alternative to checking email or stats. You know, Arianna Huffington in Thrive talks about don't check your stats first thing in the morning and let other people dictate your day. I completely agree because I believe that the morning cup of tea or coffee is sacred. It's a sacred time where you can tune into yourself, get recalibrated, and go on to your day. More effective than usual. So I have chapters. The first one is the carving of the cup. That's how to deal with pain and how pain creates capacity for more love, more life. And it's got a parable in it and an exercise. Then the second one is pride can't feed a baby. That's about learning to ask for help and actually receiving it.

Yeah, let's start for a minute. Pride cannot feed a baby. Learning asks for help. There's a lot of people out there that are waiting to be discovered because they care, because they're talented, because they're good people. And in a lot of ways, I have learned that why I sell, why I'm such a big advocate for marketing, is that you have to go out and ask. Now, how you ask is critical. There's a big difference between being a giver, being a taker, being in a desperate situation and how you approach it versus being there because you have been very selfish. And then you find yourself stuck in that sort of situation. So how would you suggest that someone that has. That really does need the help and really does want to create value, how do they. What. What. What do they need to. How do they need to think about that?

In this one, it was basically, I didn't know how to ask for help because my dad was like, bravado, strong man. And he always told me, never depend on anybody. Never be, you know, never take away from anybody, only add. And so for me, when I was so broke, I was starving and I was still nursing Sage, I had just gotten back from the hospital. I had no food in the house, and I had to actually admit it to somebody that I was starving. And that was terrifying. And so I called my neighbor and I asked her if she could bring some food over and told her what had happened with Sage and the operation and all of that, I was still in shock. And she came over and brought the food. So in that chapter, I talk about that, and then I teach the reader how to make a specific request. So getting comfortable making requests and making it specific and simple is what you have to do. And if you make it simple, it's a four step process. If you make it simple, then you can continue to do it and then you can get more comfortable with it. I think where people stop themselves up is they are waiting to be discovered, which is, you know, it's whatever.

Unless you're lucky.

Yeah, well. Or unless you're, you know, some. Some sort of incredible beauty or something is going to attract people to you out of the blue. But the other aspect of it is when you learn to ask for help, you're actually creating fellowship. And fellowship is actually an exchange. So when you ask someone else for help or guidance, you're actually allowing them to shine as well. And what you were talking about earlier in our conversation was all these side effects, all these positive side effects of the actual asking. We would have never known. Renee introduced. You said, go to her book signing. Now all of a sudden we're doing a podcast and we're serving your readers a sense of inspiration. But we wouldn't have ever known that had Renee not asked you to come to my book signing. There's so many beautiful, unexpected gifts that come from asking. So we have to just be aware of that.

I love it. I love it. Great advice. Okay, so sorry I stopped you there, but this is great.

Yeah. And then just show up. I read that tonight in the reading, and that was where I had. But I had a business plan, and I showed up to buy a guy's business for free and then asked him to finance it, which was a struggle, but I did it.

Can I mention that you also, along your journey, you raised $8.5 million too, which is really good. And we might get into that. Might do that in part two, but I think Woody Allen. I don't know the exact quote, but it's been thrown around.

80% of success is showing up. Yeah.

I think there's so much.

And I agree. So basically, I talk about how I built the business and the very key takeaways. 17 secret lessons I learned starting where you are. I didn't have $150,000. I ended up leaving that cafe with $3,000 and I bought a tea cart instead of opening a tea room and the tea cart. I ended up meeting so many people, and a buyer from Whole Foods found me. And then Asked me to go into packaging, and then I started wholesaling. And then all of a sudden, I'm in Whole Foods. And so all these things happen and they snowball by taking action. So the book, the main theme, basically, is with a mission to serve you cannot fail, and to take action no matter where you are and you will succeed. Turning burdens into blessings. Plucking the positive out of life. Getting to the heart of matters. Blending what you've got. That has a really good lesson about limitations and how they can actually. They're like the guardrails to your destiny. Collaborate to be great. Answering the call, Cultivating curiosity. Oh, my God. That's the best chapter for so many people. Because I almost cut a product because the numbers were bad, but I didn't realize it was from a lack of distribution. And my staff actually were like, no, you cannot cut coconut chai. I ended up going supernova and taking our company national. Wow. Seeing the forest for the teas.

I like that. Seeing the forest for the teas.

That's perspective. Because when you're in business, you often lack perspective, which is what's so great about your podcast. Or everything you do is you're giving entrepreneurs perspective. And then without hot water, the leaves impart little. That was my $2 million product failure and all sorts of other stuff.

Okay, can I talk? So, $2 million product failure, how did you learn to handle and cope with failures? Because in the pursuit of success, in the pursuit of anything, you're going to fall down, you're going to make mistakes. Even when you have the best of intentions and try your very best in the entrepreneur, you get paid for results.

Exactly. Well, so every chapter here basically starts out with a failure, and then I find the lesson of how to overcome it. So that's where it's a way to shortcut for other people if they can, like, do the exercises and get it done. But that failure was so, so intense because it was something I so believed in. It was. I was launching. I was taking my mission higher and launching the first 100% biodynamic, fair trade, super organic, the greenest green Tea on the Planet line, which it talks in detail about. I was going national for the first time with it, and it was just an enormous, exciting thing. But there was only two gardens that grew biodynamics at the time. I had to buy futures. I had to buy a year's worth of the product to secure it for the distribution that I had nailed down. And what ended up happening was when you buy futures, you have to buy it, you actually bought the product. And then the economy crashed and it was the most premium, ultra premium expensive, beautiful, ultra sustainable product. And I ended up having to clearance fourteen, fifteen dollar tins for a buck at grocery outlet. And it was a huge tragedy. And another one I didn't write about and hear is going in the next book was a breast cancer research tea that also failed. And I thought, my God, everybody is going to be so in love with my mission. But when the economy failed, they were trying to figure out how to buy milk and they were in fear. So I couldn't expect them to buy this very expensive product. So I had to come up with a solution. And I talk about that in there.

Right, right. Great. So allow kindness in. We'll talk about that.

Okay. Well, that was when my son's life was finally saved or completed at ucla. And I had become very, very intense in my ambition because, you know, the company saved his life. And then I was saving, you know, tea workers livelihoods. And I had a lot of pressure I had put on myself and I had become very hard on the outside and very intense and very focused on just success and productivity over relaxation and balance. And so that was when a young man, sage, was going through his operation and the surgeon actually made me leave the hospital because I was so freaked out. It was his final operation and Dr. Churchill actually sent me out of the hospital short of being escorted by security because I was kind of in a panic attack. And I walked around UCLA and I went into Brentwood and I stumbled upon this place called Green Tea Terrace. And I thought, oh God, I need green tea. I sat down and this young man just cup after cup after cup nourished my soul with matcha and just gifted me his wisdom. And I drank it because I had nothing else I could do. And it actually healed an enormous part of me because I allowed his kindness to seep in and bring me comfort in a really tough time.

So the thing with you, it's really not about drinking tea. That's one of the ingredients of a whole.

It's a great vehicle because it increases your vitality. It's a great antioxidant. I mean it's fight cancer cells. I mean everything it does so much, but it also is a lifestyle. It's actually a mindfulness lifestyle.

You said in Asia that Asian tea is considered a martial art.

Yeah, The Japanese tea ceremony is actually considered a martial art. So it takes many, many, many years to master. You take lessons the way you do, you know, aikido and. Yeah, it's considered a martial art. I don't do Japanese style tea ceremony or I would say I'm a novice at it. I do do it, but I do gong fu cha, which is a Chinese tea ceremony, which is very methodic with the way the hands move and the way that the cups are used and the way that the water pours. It's a moving meditation.

You know what I think would be interesting? I mean, and I say this in complete selfishness for myself, you know, and hopefully the listeners will pick this up. What is a ritual that I could adopt related to the. Because when you're talking about my friend Arianna Huffington, not starting out the first thing in the morning with your electronic friends, I mean that one shift alone is huge. I don't sleep anywhere near my phone. I mean I live in a two story home and I leave the phone far away from me because I don't even want the magnetic sort of grab and look at it. And creating rituals is critical. Setting an environment where you actually can, if you want to be more focused, you have to have a focused environment. If you want to be in better shape. You can't have a bunch of junk food laying around in the environment. And you really have not only turned this into a ritual and a ceremony, but you've created this for other people. So what are some things that people listening could actually do? And I think, other than I think think just I'm going to do exactly. I'm going to tomorrow I'm going to read a chapter of your book and I'm going to make some tea and I'm just going to do it because spending the time with you, I'm inspired to do that. But for the listeners, I think it's just a cool thing.

Well, I do believe very strongly in having one sacred space in your home or your office where you have an actual altar of things that matter so much to you. On my altar I have two owl feathers that my daughter found a few days ago. I have a statue of Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune and abundance. She's the one who cares for the poor. She's my holy mama. And I have, I just, I have reminders, I have my vision board, I have, you know, my abundance checks that I write every new moon, which today's a new moon, we should write one before we take off. But I basically have a sacred space, a reminder of the sacred. You have to make room for the sacred in your life because it's not going to come chasing you with a stick. It's, it's a quiet space. So I do that and then I do my morning meditation. And the meditations are actually in the book and they're very simple. Vipassana is how Buddha became enlightened. And I actually, you know, I learned it in several 10 day silent retreat, sits where I had to. I couldn't speak or make eye contact. And I learned the meditation so I simplified it and put it into this to where it could be done in the time it takes to have a morning cup of tea or coffee. So awesome. I believe very strongly in, in a daily ritual, at least 11 minutes, ideally of meditation and mindfulness and focus and using mantras is great.

Awesome. Well, that's very cool. So you have one chapter, surrender to your promises. And then generosity eliminates fear. Talk about generosity eliminates fear. I mean, I think it would be really cool for people to have methods of dealing with fear as much as it's talked about or not talked about. It imprisons people.

It imprisons us. Yeah, for sure. So I've been taught how to deal with fear and that generosity eliminates it by primarily my experience with this. T estate manager in Sri Lanka. So Yana Sakram, he basically went in and took over this garden 25 years ago, which was, you know, all the workers were depressed, there was alcoholism, there was, there was abuse happening in the home, there was intense poverty, disease. They didn't even have toilets. And he went in and basically asked them what they needed. It took them a couple years before they would actually open up. And then he just kept giving to them and giving to them and he nurtured them so much that they started opening up and then the tea got better and they were working harder and there was this mutual respect and this equality. And so when I started taking over computers to them and we were doing all these programs, I thought, oh my God, what's going to happen? The kids are all getting educated on computers. No one. And this is an issue in the tea industry. And because the pay is so bad in the tea industry, all the kids are going to take off to cities and there's not going to be anyone to pluck artisan tea anymore. This is actually, I'm actually giving my way out of a business in the long term. So I was very fearful of it because I wanted to give to them the computers. But I thought, oh God, they might not actually have respect for t after this if I do this. So I talked to Yana about it on one of my trips there and Yana basically said, oh, Zeno, we have this all figured out. And I'm like, what? Because he's my holy man, really. He says, well, we're going to give the workers the land, each one of them, because we've been focusing on building them houses, each one of them. We're going to give a section of the estate and then they're going to be landholders, they're going to have to run the business, they're going to need the computers to actually do their own, you know, books and their own, you know, production models and all that. And then we're only going to be the factory. We're going to buy the tea from all the workers and they all become autonomous landowners and business owners. And that's how we're. And they'll get to use all their education and they'll be, you know, then we will truly be equal. And I was like, oh my God, like how many big huge estates or plantations actually decides that the best thing for them is to give the land to the workers and make them fully autonomous business owners?

Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

Yeah. So, I mean, that is the type of thinking that we can get to by, you know, looking at ways to eliminate our fear through giving.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Well, you know, I've always loved the whole line of life. Gives to the giver and takes from the taker. You know, being incredibly useful and incredibly generous does not usually result in bad things. I mean, you even had a quote that you showed which is double your joy, divide it with someone.

Yep, absolutely.

And so you dedicated your whole company to a fair trade model.

Yep. Okay.

And five P's, you talked about the five P's talk about those.

So in socially responsible business models they usually say, okay, it's a triple bottom line. People, planet and profit. Whereas, you know, the simple business model that many old school businesses use as just profit, and then they don't treat the people as well, they don't treat the planet as well. So I am more focused on, you know, it was triple bottom line for a long time, but then I also was looking at purpose and passion. So everybody in my business, I was successful attracting talent, retaining talent, growing talent, growing the team and sales because I ensured everybody had a context for their own purpose, to find their passion in the business. So everybody was very entrepreneurial and it was very focused on that. But what happens was if everybody is excited, purpose driven, passionate about what they're doing, they have a context to hold their heart and their excitement, then the people are obviously taken care of because they're all taken care of at their core already the planet is obviously taken care of because when people are fulfilled, they're aware of their surroundings and then profits are natural because everybody is wanting the company to stay around so that they can continue being in their purpose and having their passion. So it just is really the new model, the 21st century business model.

Will people learn about it in here?

That will be the next book, Business by the cup. But they will they learn my actual methods of it. But I'm going to extract it and put it into a science for the business book.

That's awesome. So I want to ask you a couple of business questions. Well, no, let me first before I do that, what is your favorite tea?

Well, right now, gypsy rose. I drink that. It's. It's a rose scented black tea. It's very simple but also immensely satisfying. I've been on a gypsy rose kick the last couple weeks and then I do a lot of puar, which is actually a Chinese tea that is really good at detoxing the body. And it's fermented in caves and it's. My puars are very expensive. My kids like them too and they're very expensive. And then in the afternoons I'm doing a lot of dragon phoenix pearls right now, jasmine scented pearls, really fine ones. So that's what I'm into right now. But it changes. It changes as my body needs different things at different times.

Is there an actual tea that would help with sleep? What would that be?

Herbs. So valerian is good. If you don't have a ragweed allergy, you could do chamomile. A lot of people don't realize they drink chamomile and if they have a ragweed allergy, which a third of the population does, they can't drink it. So chamomile is good. Valerian, hops, you can use hops. But I tend to. At night, I tend to do. There's a blend that I have called Italian chamomile, which is chamomile with fennel and a little bit of lemon peel which gives it a really nice rounded flavor. And that one just relaxes me right away. And it's great for digestion as well. And it makes you smell good. It makes your breasts smell good. It's great.

That's awesome. There we go. That's my. That's my. I didn't realize how much of a t education I was going to get today.

I have some in there, Carl, I'll give you some.

Yeah, you're going to Load me up. This is awesome. Yep, Perfect. Okay, so startups, what advice would you give for startups? We have a lot of people that listen that already have businesses that are new in business. I look at almost everyone, even if they're in a business, as taking some good advice from smart startups. How you look at it, because I think we're always starting something.

Oh, no, no, no. I think we have to always, you know, think like a startup, act like a grown up. Right? Is that.

Yeah, I like that, I like that.

So for startups, it's basically, I think that in the 21st century you do have to use the 5P business model. I don't think that you can have a business that doesn't have a mission to serve humanity at this point or the earth. It's all one. But I believe that, you know, ways to actually a lot of people say give back, give back, give back. But it's actually to impress and influence the way things are going. Even if you are under a million dollars like most companies, I mean only 1.8% crack the million dollar mark, at least with women owned. But even if you're only $20,000 a year, your influence can be massive in how you serve, which will inspire people, which will grow your business. I believe that with a mission to serve, the business will succeed. And then surround yourself with phenomenal mentors. There are so many free programs out there like score.org SBA. I had the former CEO of Balance Bar. He would look at my books once a month. He would help me. It's phenomenal. It's free. There are so many resources. Learn the actual skills that it's going to take for your business. So get your business model written. Use lynda.com, l Y-N-D a.com Linda is a good friend of mine and I wish you were going to be at the book party tomorrow. She'll be there, but she actually, for 25 bucks a month, you can basically learn how to build websites. You can learn marketing, you can learn anything. The resources are absolutely phenomenal. So be a sponge, learn everything. But really hone it in with a good business plan and mentors and form a mastermind group of people who are smarter than you or farther along. And that's how I would start.

Yeah, great advice, great advice. So since I'm putting this as a bonus episode on I love marketing, why do you. You're obviously a marketer, you're a great salesperson. What do you. We were talking earlier about how you said I Love sales. Why do you love it? What's your perspectives on selling and marketing?

It's much like you. You were saying, selling's not evil because selling is storytelling. And so anytime I was going to go into a meeting to sell tea at Kroger or wherever, Safeway, Walmart, whoever, I would say, dear God, Well, I'm a God freak, so I use the word God, but you can say universe or angels, whatever. And I would say, dear God, please show me how to uplift these people who I'm about to meet. And then I would go in, I would find out, you know, I'd watch their faces, and I knew as soon as they lit up, we were like in the inspiration zone. And I knew that we were actually having a. An interaction that was transformational. And so I used to always call it tea and transformation. I sold hope and the tea came with it. But I would go in, I would do a little tea ceremony, I would show them pictures, I would do a presentation. Some of these meetings were only 10 minutes. Walmart has you in and out, in and out, like that. So I would go in and I would just as quickly as possible infuse them with my enthusiasm for what I was doing and the mission that I was serving. And. And that was that. I mean, I never sold a tin of tea in my life. I transformed moments. I gave people something to look forward to. And all the buyers are still my friends.

Yeah, that's great.

I mean, I have relationships with them because I love them, I think. Love who you're meeting with. Look at it that way. Because they're humans too, and people don't, you know, they don't want to be sold to, but they want to be sold, right?

Yeah. People love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. And if you're creating value for somebody and you are not influencing them, telling the story, educating them, listening to them, and providing them an opportunity to get some of that value, then you're shortchanging people.

Absolutely. And you think about it. To sell something, right? So look at it as uplifting somebody making their lives better. And that's the thing. It's the theme of the book. With a mission to serve you cannot fail. Serve their soul. Talk to their hearts, inspire them, make them happy. It'll work.

I love it. I absolutely love it. Okay, so final words of wisdom for the listeners. Now, my, of course, suggestions are going to go get Zena's book, Life by the cup immediately. Okay. I'm going to actually start reading it tonight. Even though it's Late. I'm going to read and then I'll do it in the morning too, because I'm really excited about it. This is totally cool. And just from the time I spent with you, I think you're awesome and you're really a sharp business person. This is going to be the first book and the second one is going to be Business by the Cup. And you do women's conferences, you do all kinds of stuff. And we'll talk about that in a moment. But now, let's talk about that now. Then I'll have you end with final last words. People can find out about you from Zena tv. Z H E N A and what other stuff are you up to? How can people get more view other than just the book?

Well, I'm working on a women's retreat for fall winter, and I love facilitating and I've been considering coming up with a product mastermind. It's something where, you know, a lot of women have ideas for products. We're very Venus driven. We love sensual things and, and so many of my friends have beautiful, you know, they have a skincare idea or they have, you know, a product idea or a clothing idea. And so I really, you know, my blog and everything is geared toward women like that who want to create products and, you know, inspire people.

So I can't go to this is.

What you're saying, you can't. You can be a guest speaker. Okay. That's the only way to do it. I went to an all women's college. I've got this whole, like, I love guys. I mean, I have a son, I have a husband. I. I love men. I just love getting a group of women together to create. There's something spectacular that happens with it and it's very precious.

Awesome. Awesome. Wonderful. Okay, final words of wisdom for our listeners and then we'll send them off to get your book.

Okay, so let me take a breath and so let me think. How can I serve and uplift your listeners best right now? You know, definitely take time for tea and take time to breathe and have a mindfulness practice. My meditation teacher, who actually started out as my first consultant, he came into my company and he looked around and he said, you're a blender without a top. Get a meditation practice going. You're either going to meditate or you're going to medicate. I thought, oh, my God, I do not want to be a blender without a top. I want to be focused. Get a daily practice going, a spiritual practice, a meditation, meditation practice so that you can actually transform your life and the world.

Awesome. I love that, too. That's a great analogy, and I highly, highly recommend it. So, Zena Musaic, thank you very much. And to all our listeners, please share your comments. And if you know any male or female entrepreneurs that need some inspiration, share this interview with them. And also pick up a copy of her book, because she really had learned how to be very resourceful, build a company, and now she has documented this story to share it with other people in order to continue to inspire. So you're doing great work. Thank you so much.

And it was great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sam.