We were lucky to catch up with Julian Tcherassi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Julian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

10 years ago I was in a rock band and I randomly told the singer that I had a urinary pain and he told me to drink this tea that is used as a natural remedy for UTIs in Mexico. He said he had used it to pass a kidney stone and that the tea turns blue in the light. He gave me some palo azul and I drank about a whole gallon. Next day I had zero pain, so I started reading about palo azul’s health benefits and why it’s blue. I read dozens of studies which showed that palo azul is antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, alkaline, renoprotective, liver-protective, cardioprotective, 0 caffeine…so I started drinking it instead of coffee or regular tea.

Throughout the years, I’ve had dozens of people ask me the exact same question – “how have I never heard of this tea before?” No other company was actively sharing palo azul and it was hard to find so you had to buy it online or try your luck in Mexican grocery stores. They also didn’t have the right instructions to prepare it so it wouldn’t come out blue for some people. So eventually I decided that more people should know about this incredible fluorescent & healthy tea and right after COVID I quit my job and started dedicating myself completely to Magiktea.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I studied music/guitar right after high school and through my rock band I ended up discovering palo azul tea. Then I studied marketing at LMU and this helped me build the whole branding/messaging/website/packaging for Magiktea. I never would’ve imagined that I was going to end up in the food & beverage industry, but I think this is one of the things that I am proud of myself. I threw myself into the unknown because I felt like I had a duty to share palo azul with others and I spent thousands of hours reading about the F&B industry. Despite how complex this industry can be, I realized that no matter how clueless you are about a particular endeavor, if you put in the work you can make some magic happen!

People always tell me that I am lucky to have found such a great product, and I totally agree…but I wasn’t the only one. Millions of people knew about palo azul before I ever found out it existed. So I guess what set me apart was that I was the only one passionate enough about this plant, and the only one crazy enough to think that I could create a company to share this tea in the U.S.

Because of my passion and love for this plant, I also decided to spend hundreds of hours looking for and contacting herbs suppliers in Mexico because I wanted it to be organic & sustainably sourced. Thankfully, I was able to find a USDA certified organic farm that is also enrolled in Mexico’s Federal Program for National Natural Protected Areas, so they’re committed to a culture of sustainability & conservation. We also use biodegradable tea bags and post-consumer recycled pouches that are digitally printed in order to reduce carbon emissions and plastic waste.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Start with Why: Being an entrepreneur is the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, and you need to have a strong “why” in order to have the drive to keep going. In the 3 years since I started Magiktea, I’ve already had the local Florida government try to stop me from selling palo azul because they had never heard of it before so they assumed it wasn’t fit for human consumption…even though we had all the proper documentation. We also got sued for using an image of a bleach bottle on our website. And a logistics carrier somehow lost a whole pallet of product. All these things and dozens more, plus working 100 hour weeks has taken a toll on me, so that’s why I placed so much importance in having a strong belief in your mission, your reason for existing. If another company was sharing palo azul in the US, then Magiktea would’ve had for existing. That is why I wake up every day eager and excited to get to work, because I know that everyday more people are enjoying palo azul’s beautiful fluorescence & benefits. If you have a strong enough why, everything else falls into place.

The One Thing: If you truly believe that by accomplishing your mission, other people’s lives will improve… then this means that the more efficient you are with your time, the more people you can help. This book helped me realize that the 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle applies to everything in life and you should primarily focus your time on what you’re best at and delegate the rest to people who are better at those other tasks. You can get 80% of the results with 20% of the effort, so prioritize the low hanging fruit, the minimum effective dose, and then if you have free time keep going.

Shoedog: This was such an inspiring story, it shows how a man’s passion will get him through 20 years of hardship to build Nike from nothing into one of the world’s most successful brands.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Like most entrepreneurs I started Magiktea with my own savings and my family invested a small amount. I initially wanted to start selling palo azul tea in bottles, but that would require a lot more money. I already had the bottle design, the label, the flavors, my whole business plan was based on bottles. So I approached a friend who’s father was in the F&B industry about partnering on this project and I flew to San Francisco to pitch them. I had my whole pitch memorized and it was about 20 minutes long, but when I walked into my friend’s father office…the whole pitch went out the window and the meeting only took about 10 minutes. He loved the tea, but my mistake was that I didn’t have a physical product so that he could actually feel the magic in his hands as a fully finished product and not just some tea in a glass cup and pretty PDFs. I also had no sales yet so that didn’t help. He gave me his business card and he said to contact him later down the line.

So I had to do a full pivot and instead of starting with bottles I had enough money to start selling just the loose palo azul tea in pouches and I would package everything myself. I grew the company slowly, I did my own sales, marketing, website, supply chain management, I had very little expenses. Eventually we had enough money to start using a copacker and launch our palo azul tea bags and now this year we’re finally planning on starting the formulation for the palo azul tea bottles.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.magiktea.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinkmagik
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drinkmagik
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/magiktea/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/drinkmagik
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@magiktea