Meet Julian Tcherassi

We recently connected with Julian Tcherassi and have shared our conversation below.

Julian, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

It was a very random journey, but I was always following my heart and eventually I ended up where I needed to be. I was playing guitar in a rock band when I was 19 years old and the singer told me about this tea called palo azul, which is a wood that you boil in water and it’s used for kidney health in Mexico and it turns blue in the light. I became intrigued by this tea and I started reading all the studies on its health benefits, what makes it blue, why is it fluorescent, etc…and I learned that this wood has fluorescent nutrients (polyphenols) which the tree evolved to defend itself against excessive ultraviolet radiation. Dozens of studies on palo azul found that these polyphenols are also what make it antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, liver-protective, renoprotective, cardioprotective, neuroprotective, anti-arthritic, and more.

So I started drinking palo azul tea for my own health and I just liked looking at the blue fluorescence. Whenever I drank alcohol, I would drink it to protect my liver/kidneys and friends would frequently ask me what I was drinking and why it was blue. People always asked me, “how have I never heard of this tea before?” So eventually I decided that more people should know about this incredible tea and since nobody else was sharing it in health food stores or social media, I decided to start Magiktea and share palo azul with others.

When I realized that I could make a much bigger impact in other people’s lives by sharing this tea, which has helped thousands of people improved their health, I decided to quit my job and postpone my music career. I discovered palo azul when I was 20, and I had the idea to start Magiktea when I was around 24, but I finally pulled the trigger when I was 27. The journey takes time, unexpected things happen, so now I just embrace the ride and I go where the wind blows.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I get to wake up everyday and do something that I truly love, which is to simply share this magical tea with others and see the smiles and the amazement on people’s faces when they see palo azul’s fluorescence for the first time. I frequently have people gasp or say things like “oh my god I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life”, and I get to explain to them that these fluorescent polyphenols are what make palo azul tea a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory tea.

We have hundreds of testimonials of people who have improved their health with palo azul tea, so I wake up everyday motivated to keep moving forward and share palo azul with more people because I know that millions of people could benefit from palo azul, but they don’t know that it even exists. Once you realize that pursuing your mission can truly help others, and that it’s not just about working for money, it amplifies your meaning of life.

As most entrepreneurs, I wear many hats, so I import the palo azul, manage production, supply chain, ship out orders, run the website, social media accounts, Amazon, I create content, take pictures & videos, write articles about palo azul, I run ads on Google, Amazon, social media. In the beginning I would knock doors to get my product into stores, now we’re in 230+ stores so I focus more on increasing our sales in our current stores by doing in-store demos, giving free samples to customers and educating them about palo azul. Now we have stores ordering Magiktea from all over the U.S. and even some stores in Canada and Europe.

A big part of what I do now is sponsoring wellness events where people do things like meditation, yoga, pilates, sound baths, dancing, sharing their art, etc. This community absolutely loves palo azul, so I keep getting invited to these type of events and I have a lot of fun as well.

Some new exciting things for us are that we recently got our USDA Organic Certification so all Magiktea products will have the USDA Organic seal in around 1-2 months. We’re also exhibiting at two of the largest natural food & beverage tradeshows, Newtopia Now 2024 and Expo West 2025.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Sales: I used to sell windows door to door and this taught me how to overcome the fear of rejection, how to become an expert on a product in order to obtain enough confidence to knock on a stranger’s door and know that you have your pitch down and you can answer any question or objection they may have. It also taught me incredible resilience and perseverance. I knew I had no choice but to sell if I wanted to eat, so I read a bunch of books about sales, watched a ton of videos, became better single day, and I eventually became the top sales guy for a while. This made it pretty easy for me to start selling palo azul in stores so on my first day I got 2 stores, and in around 2 months we were in 50 stores in Tampa.

Marketing: I studied marketing in college and I also read a bunch of books about marketing so I used all of this knowledge to create the branding, the content, run the ad campaigns, create POS marketing materials to educate customers, improve our SEO, etc. Thanks to this skill, I had a marketing plan from the beginning which helped us get our product into prestigious retailers such as Erewhon, Lassens, Bristol Farms, Gelsons. And because of our branding design, our product was interesting enough that it was picked up from the shelves of Erewhon by none other than the Kardashians, so Magiktea was on The Kardashians S5E2.

Photography: I took a photography class in college so in the beginning, I took all the pictures & videos on our SM and website. I spent literally hundreds of hours going outside and taking pictures of palo azul tea in the sun because that’s how the fluorescence will look best. This saved me a lot of money and it still does because I continue to use my DSLR to take pictures and videos at events.

Advice: Get a sales job, read books about sales & marketing, and learn how to use a DSLR camera.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

My parents both started their own women’s clothing brand right after college and this has been their job their whole lives. When I was a little kid would take me and my siblings to their factory and taught me how they run their business. I would see them managing employees, working on spreadsheets, talking to suppliers, negotiating, making deals, etc. I was unaware of it at the time but all the “business meetings” that my parents had while I was in the background, instilled in me a lot of lessons about how to run a business. I think this was the most impactful thing they did for me, they always included me and my siblings in their business and as we got older we would have family business meetings.

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Image Credits

Alexa Ashley

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