Meet Linda Xu

We recently connected with Linda Xu and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Linda, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I think I get my resilience from my mom and grandma and growing up with a lot of independence. In some ways, I come from a matriarchal line of women who achieved high professional achievements in the medical field. Both my mom and my aunt are doctors, my sister is currently in medical school, and my grandma was a pharmacist. And although I’m not a doctor myself, this background definitely inspired me to go into the health industry, having studied biomedical engineering in college, then worked in medical device/telehealth industries, and now having started my own supplement company. It also inspires me a lot to think about what my mom went through at my age, and it’s even hard to fathom myself going through what she did. Her path to become a doctor was a long one, and she didn’t fully become a doctor until her mid-30s. She had gotten her medical degree from Beijing University, immigrated to Chicago to pursue a PhD since she initially thought she wanted a research career, then realized she didn’t like research and resumed the medical path of internship, residency, etc. All the while, she had gotten married, had me, was settling into a new country, and also went through a divorce – all within a span of a few years. I can’t imagine myself balancing all of that being her age now. And at some point, she really couldn’t. While she was completing her residency, I was sent to China to live with my grandparents in Beijing for a few years. I think that’s probably where I get my independent streak from. I was always a bit of a rebel and went my own way. I was naturally ambitious and my parents were not at all involved in my schoolwork since I was quite independent about it. In Beijing, I went to a local school rather than an international school. You get a decent amount of independence as a city kid in China, I remember. I would go to school and back on my own. I made friends with Chinese students who thought I was really cool as the “American” kid, and I participated in after school programs. I even had private tutoring from the school who maybe thought I was gifted or needed catching up – I honestly remember the former but looking back at it, maybe that’s just what they told me. My grandma was a big influence on me too. She was a pharmacist in a time that there wasn’t that many women in the medical field in China but she did retire early in order to help my mom raise me amid the divorce and going back to medical residency. In any case, I returned to the U.S. for 3rd grade, and I remember waiting at the front door for my mom to come home in the evenings when I first got back from China, feeling like my mom was a bit of a stranger to me after living apart for some time. I think that time period did build up a natural independence and resilience in me. I was also quite stubborn and defiant. I didn’t know how to swim or how to ride a bike compared to the other kids at my age and felt like I was behind in those things for my age, so I spent my summers off from school determined to learn those things myself. By that time, my mom had remarried but both my parents were busy working adults so I had a lot of time on my own so I resolved to teach myself those things. I remember biking around and around in circles on the driveway until I could finally ride the bike myself without training wheels. I was enrolled in ESL when I first returned to the U.S., and I absolutely hated it since I thought I didn’t need it. Plus, ESL class was scheduled during recess so I had half a recess compared to the other kids. I definitely went from being outgoing in China as being seen as a popular kid from America to being very shy as a new kid when I returned to school in the U.S. But I still was pretty independent and almost defiant. Eventually, I convinced my mom to write a letter to my ESL teacher to say that I quit. The next day, I went into the main office and found my ESL teacher’s mail cubby to drop off the letter. And I never went to ESL class ever again after that. I don’t know if you could even really just decide to quit on your own without the school’s permission but they never bothered me about it so I never went back. So while I grew up to being shy, I don’t think this spirit of mine ever went away. I had constantly fought with my parents who wanted me to go to a different college or a different college to instead pave my own path. In the corporate world, I’m most natural and motivated in a leadership role, whether it’s leading projects or teams. I enjoy problem solving and working with a team to get there. I eventually entered into a product manager career (after many years of hustling my way there – building an app and cold outreaching to department heads at my first company to let me move laterally and be a product manager for them). I really enjoyed building a digital product from scratch and leading a team of engineers to get there. I learned how to play the office politics and advocate for my team. After working at several fast-paced startups in healthcare, I eventually burnt out and became disillusioned, especially when my last company had a very toxic culture and leadership who micro-managed us. My desire to be independent came out once more, and I decided to take the leap to start my own company, something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’m definitely not ruling out returning to the corporate world since I’m not sure what would happen but I do know I want to give having my own thing a good try since I know I’ll always regret it if I never do!

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m the founder of HUA Wellness. We are a wellness brand specializing in supplements for stress relief. Our mission is to reconnect people to nature through targeted natural stress relief products, green space advocacy, and embodying the urban wellness lifestyle. Our goal is to help people manage stress in their lives so that they can live their best lives. I was inspired to start HUA Wellness after my own journey struggling with burnout and stress while ironically working at health-related tech startups. I was so stressed to the point that I would get heart palpitations preventing me from being able to sleep. I even went to urgent care who recommended I go to the ER to check if I have any blood clots. Ultimately, all my blood tests came back normal, and I was told that there was nothing really physically wrong with me but that I really needed to manage my stress better. That was when it really opened my eyes of the connection between the mind and body. I had never thought that stress could manifest in such scary, physical symptoms. That’s what lead me to embark on a journey to prioritize my wellness and re-evaluate what was important to me. While on this journey, I sought for products that could support my goals of reducing and manage stress but I ultimately couldn’t really find products that worked for me. I also felt really discouraged by seeing a proliferation of celebrity and appropriated wellness brands where the former portrayed a celebrity whose lifestyle was completely unattainable compared to my own and where the latter featured brands that had an Asian inspired name or aesthetic or holistic health principles but then had no founders that looked like me. That’s when I decided to use my background in bioengineering, my knowledge in the health industry, as well as my doctor mom as a consultant to create products that actually works. HUA supplements are made from naturally sourced ingredients that your body is more likely to absorb and formulated to have a clinically potent dosage. Many of our ingredients are also patented for being tested in human clinical trials that demonstrated stress reduction, improved sleep quality, and more. Many supplements on the market don’t work because of their ingredient quality, their dosage not being potent or strong enough, and because of their filler or sugar content. I am very confident in our products because I use them on a daily basis to manage my stress as a business owner and entrepreneur! I wanted to create something in the world that I was looking for and that could tangibly improve people’s lives. The number of messages and reviews I’ve received from my customers are incredibly encouraging and the fact that I could concretely impact a stranger’s life for the better is more than enough to motivate me to keep going. Our bestsellers include our Whole Food Magnesium Powder that we source from natural mineral sources such as seawater and red algae from the coasts of Iceland and Ireland. Our other core product is our Chill Switch™ Adaptogen Stress Support blend, our strongest natural stress relief solution. That product contains clinically studied forms of ashwagandha, l-theanine, GABA, holy basil leaf, and cacao seed. We’re only a year old but we’re growing fast. You can find us on our website, huawellness.com, as well as at Pop Up Grocer in Greenwich Village if you’re in New York City! We’re hoping to expand to more natural foods, specialty retailers soon (think Erewhon, Sprouts, Whole Foods, etc). We’re also constantly improving our products and developing new products. Feel free to follow us on instagram @huawellness to keep updated on what we’re working on!

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?

Three areas that I think are the most impactful are as follows: 1) networking and relationship building, 2) social media, and 3) finance/business.

Being a business owner has really opened my eyes about how relationship driven business really is and how important your connections are. I used to think that if I just go to the right schools and have a good career, then I would just be able to transfer my skills to building a business but it’s so much more than that. As someone who didn’t come from generational wealth, don’t have Wall Street connections, or don’t have family members with business backgrounds (they are all medical or tech professionals), it is much harder and it’s a longer journey since you will most likely have to bootstrap and start from the ground up. When you’re in the corporate world, your whole world is just your coworkers internal to the company, and you don’t really have to build relationships outside of that. And even with the networking events I did go to, I wasn’t that intentional about forming relationships since it wasn’t something I really needed in my career at a company. If I could go back in time, I would be more intentional in building relationships outside my job that could teach me and be useful in entrepreneurship. Retailers, buyers, other businesses to partner with – these are all relationships. And since I was in the tech/product side, I didn’t really interface with any of that.

The second thing that is the most impactful I think is social media. With paid advertising becoming more expensive these days, organic social media and community has become more and more important. It could me pretty much a year to be really comfortable posting myself publicly on social media. if I could go back in time, I would start this journey much earlier while still at my corporate job to learn how to build a following on social media. I never was a social media person before this so it is still new to people and had to get comfortable with being “cringe” online. Honestly, it takes a lot of self-work to get to the point where you just don’t care about what people think of you online but if you do care, you’re never going to be able to grow on social media. I’m finally at that mindset where I’ve decided to just “kill the ego” and embracing being cringe online. But I wished I started earlier. Building an audience and launching something to that audience is so valuable nowadays.

The last thing that is the most impactful I think is finance and business knowledge in terms of structuring your business model, pricing your products, and figuring out the unit economics. This is especially important when you are bootstrapping. I didn’t come from business/finance background so I’ve had to learn a lot and often times makes me mad and think, “why didn’t they teach you this stuff in school??”. But if I could go back, I would maybe try to learn a bit more about this area by potentially working closer to finance and business departments more closely.

A bonus thing I’ll leave here is having resilience and adaptability. As you can see, I had none of these 3 things that I’ve mentioned and you’re never going to know everything when you start so perhaps the most important quality is to have resilience and adaptability. Have the confidence that you can learn quickly, adapt, and evolve from mistakes.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

There hasn’t been one specific person that has been the most helpful but what has been the most helpful is finding community. I’ve joined several groups in NYC for female founders and business owners. It is so important to be able to talk to other people in a similar path and ambition to you that share your challenges so you don’t feel alone, especially if you’re a solo founder like myself. You often learn more from your peers that are in the same stage as you or slightly more ahead than you than from someone that is already so entirely successful that you can no longer relate to them nor do they have the time to build a real relationship with you. If you have one of those types of mentors, that’s great and definitely maintain that relationship. But personally, I have found finding peers to be much more helpful, and I have also made great friends out of that.

Another thing that has been very helpful is using AI tools like ChatGPT to make my work more efficient, especially as a solo founder without any cofounders.

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Image Credits

Coco Xue

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