Why Jay Shetty Revels In The Uncertainty Of Entrepreneurship

0:10Hello friends, I'm Ray Latif and you're listening to the number one podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with best-selling author and podcast host, Jay Shetty, who is also the co-founder of fast-growing adaptogenic tea brand, Juni. Former monk, wellness influencer, podcaster, beverage entrepreneur. Jay Shetty, who is one of the most well-known and respected names in the field of self-improvement, is all of these things. But it's an emphasis on clarity in everything he does that best defines him. Jay is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, including Think Like a Monk and host of On Purpose, one of the most popular podcasts in the United States.

1:04He's also known as a life coach to the stars, praised by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Jennifer Lopez, and Ben Affleck. He has a vast social media following, with over 15 million followers on Instagram and nearly 5 million subscribers on YouTube. In 2021, Jay and his wife, Rade Devlukia Shetty, herself a popular fitness and plant-based foods influencer, launched Sama, a brand of tea sachets made with natural and adaptogenic ingredients. That concept evolved into Juni, a 4-SQ line of ready-to-drink sparkling teas made with a Super 5 blend of adaptogens and nootropics, including green tea, lion's mane, acerola cherry, reishi mushroom, and ashwagandha.

1:52The beverages, which contain no sugar and only 5 calories per 12-ounce can, recently landed chain-wide distribution at Sprouts. In this interview, I spoke with Jay about how Juni fits into his purview for mental health and physical wellness, the criteria he uses to identify alignment with potential business partners, and how the intersection of human behavior and evolution of social media impacts consumer habits and their motivation to try new things. He also explained why three Fs are key to Juni's positioning and marketing strategy, and what he means when he says that happiness is overrated.

2:35Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with the one and only Jay Shetty. Jay, great to see you. Hey Ray, it's great to see you as well. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, me too as well. I don't typically record on Friday afternoons. We're here on the East Coast. You're on the West Coast, Pacific Time. So it's still the morning for you. And when I was driving over here, I was thinking to myself, geez, you know, does everyone look at a Friday as being like the best day of the week because we're coming up on the weekend?

3:03And I know so many people are just like, yeah, we need to get to the end of the week. But I would think for someone like yourself, every day is like a Friday. I am very grateful and fortunate to do what I love every day. So there's definitely a joy and a passion and a sense of happiness that comes with every day. And at the same time, I'd be honest and say I work extremely hard. So I also look forward to having some time off, taking a break. And I see them as the same thing. I was saying this to a team member a couple of months ago, probably just before the holidays. And I was saying that to me, rest is as much a part of work as work is a part of rest in that I like to use my weekend to refuel, to renew, to refine my mind, to give my brain some time off so that I can actually be productive, effective and creative next week.

3:51because if I don't do that, then there's only so far you can get with continuing to push your brain and push your mind and push your body. So even though I do love what I do every day and I am fortunate to have that set up, I still genuinely do look forward to seeing my friends this weekend, playing a bit more extra pickleball, which I'm in love with right now. And just being able to sleep in like my weekends, I definitely allow myself to get a bit of extra rest. And I value all of that. So I'm the same as everyone too. Do you appreciate boredom? I had a colleague once who told me, Ray, don't underestimate the benefits of boredom.

4:28Boredom is totally underrated. And I think folks might misunderstand it as being, well, you know, being bored means like just being a lazy slug on the couch. No, I think it's like what you said, it's a time to rest, reflect and refuel. But I don't know, what are your thoughts? Yeah, it's so funny you ask that because years ago, this might have been like 2019 now, I think Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, if you know the two books, he came on my podcast on purpose and we literally recorded a whole episode about why boredom is one of the best things in the world to do. And to me, boredom is the idea of being able to sit alone with my thoughts without having an external form of trying to entertain myself.

5:09So whether that's scrolling, whether it's trying to flick through streaming platforms, but actually saying, well, wait a minute, let me just not have something external entertain me, but let me find a way to make this time meaningful, useful, and powerful. And so I've always enjoyed that. I feel I find it harder to hear my own intuition and my clarity of voice if I'm too surrounded by external noise. And so I count boredom as, that's how I define boredom. And I think everyone has their own definition and is allowed to have their own definition of what that means as well. Yeah, there's typically a negative connotation associated with boredom.

5:43But if you think about it in a positive light, it could be a good thing. For sure. For sure. I can agree. I mentioned to your team that I wanted to kick off the interview, even though we've already kicked off the interview with a little bit of word association. And you mentioned your podcast On Purpose. I'd love to hear what you think of when you hear the word purpose. purpose? Oh, wow. What a great question. You want them to be quick, right? You want like quick responses. I would say if you can say something in under 10 seconds, that would be ideal. And a word or a sentence, so you don't mind.

6:14Word or sentence is fine. When I think of the word purpose, I think of using your gifts and talents in the service of others. That's what I think of when I think of purpose. How about love? I think of love being heartfelt and genuine. Authenticity. Being who you are with everyone is different. Leadership. Learning from others and allowing them to lead when they have better ideas. Happiness. Overrated. I'll let you off the hook here. Entrepreneurship. I can explain it if you want. entrepreneurship, a new passion, new passion. Can I go back to happiness for a second? Why is happiness overrated? The reason why I think happiness is overrated, and I know that hopefully I don't want to say that to upset people.

7:14I think it's more that I found happiness to be a difficult thing to look for in life when you look at the natural cause of events that most people are going through. So you lose a loved one, hard to find happiness. You have a miscarriage, hard to find happiness. You turn on the news, hard to find happiness. And I find that the search for happiness almost creates a unhealthy experience of, well, I'll never be happy. Where can I find it? I don't see it anywhere. And I feel that looking for purpose, looking for meaning, looking for service, looking for peace, looking for the ability to support and care.

7:58I feel like those are far more worthy pursuits that actually lead to a feeling of happiness. But if happiness becomes the billboard sign and the neon sign that we're chasing, it can become a really painful experience. And so I found looking for purpose, service, meaning to be far healthier pursuits that actually do lead to happiness. And that happiness is a happiness you can always hold on to and keep, and it's yours. Whereas I think the way we've talked about happiness generally in the world is pleasure or moments of fleeting happiness, which I think we all are kind of tired of and don't want to settle for.

8:36So that's kind of why I use that word. And hopefully it was, yeah, hopefully something more surprising too. Yeah, it's wonderful. And thank you very much for expounding on that. Let's tie the last two words together, happiness and entrepreneurship. I hope that becoming an entrepreneur has given you happiness, particularly as an entrepreneur in the beverage industry. You are the co-founder of Juni, which is a fantastic brand, a very exciting brand, and very exciting to hear that you just recently got into all Sprout stores across the United States. So congratulations on that. Thank you so much.

9:11Yeah, it's wonderful. Tell us a bit about the origins of Juni and why get into the tea business. Yeah, absolutely. No, and we're so excited about the 400 plus Sprout stores that Juni's now in and, you know, so grateful for that partnership. But yeah, going back, it's really interesting to me that from a very basic point of view, you know, my wife and I are both British Indians and tea is so British and so Indian and in so many ways. But on a very deep level, when I was growing up, one of my fondest memories is time that I spent with my mom. And both my parents were immigrants to England and they both worked.

9:51And my mom especially, she was the sole breadwinner of the house at times. She used to make us breakfast, lunch and dinner. She'd pick us up from school. She'd drop us to school. She'd do our homework with us, me and my younger sister. And I didn't always get a lot of time with my mom. But I do remember still feeling very loved and her being very present. And that all came down to when she'd pick me up from school or pick me up from daycare, we'd sit down together and we'd have a cup of tea together. And it'd usually be an herbal tea, like a lemon ginger, good for my immunity to protect me from the cold of London.

10:25And we'd sit down and she'd say, how was your day? How was school? How did it go? What did you learn today? And even though she was out meeting clients in the evening and busy during the day, I remember that that time with her made me feel her presence. And so I started to equate tea with care and with love and with presence. And that took me years to realize. And then when I met my wife and we started dating before she was my wife, her family has a ritual that after every meal, they will all sit together, have a cup of tea and talk and share stories and laugh and put the TV on and hang out. And it became a ritual for me and her when we came together.

11:03And then during the pandemic, my wife would literally mix herbs and spices and make teas for digestion, make teas for stress, make teas for immunity so that we could protect ourselves, to be healthy. And she just had this art and this gift of finding flavors and finding things that were really beneficial to us. And so tea's been a part of both of our lives since we were young, before we knew each other. It's been a big part of our relationship. And we wanted to create a product and create a brand that can introduce people to things that tasted good, the things that were good and things that felt good for them.

11:42And we thought, what better way than to introduce people to herbs and spices and plant extracts in a way that's very easy? I think all of us think, oh, gosh, I forgot to take my supplements today. I think we all think, oh, God, I've got to like take that thing and I've got to take that thing. And I was like, I feel that stress, too, by the way. I'm not perfect. I miss out on so many little things that I'm trying to get into my routine. But what if you could put really good things into one product that would make it easy? You could just take that and you'd automatically feel better and it'd be good for you.

12:11That's where it all came from. And I think that was one of the biggest reasons why we went into do a ready to drink or RTD as I've learned and learning more about the industry. But the reason why we did that was because we felt it had to be even more accessible. Not everyone loves tea that people may be coffee drinkers. And I don't think they need to stop that. I think we wanted to find something that has a little bit of taste of tea, but it doesn't even taste like tea. You don't even have to be a tea lover to approach this and find the benefits of the adaptogens. And the reason why we called it Junie was it stands for just you and I.

12:44And this idea for me and my mom is like just about me and my mom. It's about me and my wife. It's about her and her sister. And so how could this be a reminder to share moments with the people that you love and connect deeply with the people that you love? Absolutely. I love the idea of offering consumers sort of a one-stop solution or all-in-one solution that they can drink on a regular basis to make it easy for them. But it's definitely not easy to start a beverage company. And as you mentioned, an RTD, a ready-to-drink beverage company is just loaded with challenges. What were your initial expectations when you thought about starting this business and what's the reality of being in it right now?

13:25Definitely. I mean, I obviously come from a world where we create content, majority of which is online. I do live events and I've published two books, but generally my work's online. And so we can edit a podcast or update a website and it takes two seconds. Whereas when you're reformulating something to get it to taste better and have the right proportions and reduce the calories and reduce the sugar intake, because we didn't want that. I mean, you start recognizing that an update online, which took you three minutes, now takes three months. And that sounds bizarre to someone who's like, obviously it does.

14:00But as someone who's been in the digital space and the online space, it's a completely different patience and renewal program. I think we saw during the pandemic how the prices of tin cans went up, how export import prices went up, and you start to recognize just how the global economy impacts a product that you're making locally and how much that can have. I think one of the things that we found exciting though, and by the way, all of these are great learning experiences, is that you recognize a lot of things. The first thing you put out is never the best thing. The first formulation we put out of our drink was not the best one.

14:36The one we have right now is the best we've ever had and we'll continue to improve it. For us, it was really important to make sure that it had ashwagandha, that it had lion's mane, that it had reishi mushroom, but that you wouldn't even know that those are in there and that it would still taste good. But we also wanted zero grams of sugar because that was a big priority to us. We wanted people to have a sweetness without having that. So I think for me, what I've learned through this process and what I get excited about is that there's so much great feedback from our consumers. There's so much great feedback from our audience.

15:07It's a really exciting time to be in this space if you know what you're doing uniquely. And I think we've always known that. I think we were always a team. We always wanted to be adaptogenic. We wanted to have adaptogens. And for people who don't know, adaptogens are plant extracts and herbs that rebalance your body. So if you're experiencing stress, they'll reduce that stress. If you're feeling tired, they'll bring you back to a sense of energy and balance. And we wanted to introduce the world to adaptogens, which is far more my wife's expertise than it is mine. She's a nutritionist, a dietician and a iuradic health counselor.

15:40And so she that's, that's really her, her expertise. And our goal was, it's an exciting time because we're very clear. We want people to live a healthy life. We want people to be excited about something they consume every day. And we want it to be easy. We want it to be fun. We want this to be the drink you're having while you're watching a game. We want it to be the drink that you have every weekend, in the morning, as your midday pick-me-up. I think it's an exciting time if you have clarity. And I would encourage that for entrepreneurs who are entering the beverage space or an EOS space, is have real clarity on why you're doing what you're doing and what that is, because it makes a huge difference in helping you overcome the natural challenges that every entrepreneurs going to have to face.

16:22Even if you have clarity, though, your approach might need to be tweaked. And it was the case with Junie that before it was called Junie, it was called Joyo, and it needed a rebrand. You needed to tweak the branding somehow, some way. But what elicited the rebrand? What made it such that a name change would benefit what we're trying to do here? Yeah, I think there were a lot of things. I think when we first planned the design of the cans and everything we had this beautiful amazing artist in France designed the icons for each of our each of our cases and we were really really passionate about them they're beautiful if anyone hasn't seen them and I know we're doing videos so you know all of these little icons that to us represent all these really beautiful experiences and hopefully allow people to make memories and and they were really important to us and when we first printed the cans we didn't realized that we'd made them too small.

17:16The Cannes had a white background. You couldn't really see them. They didn't pop off the shelf. And like, it's almost like you have this view of what makes a brand look cool. And then you actually see it on the shelf when it's real and you go, oh, wait a minute, that doesn't look like anything we wanted it to be. We found that the name Joya was hard to pronounce for a lot of people. They were like, how do you pronounce that? Like, how does that sound? Like it wasn't flowing. It wasn't rolling off the tongue. And I think even that first formulation that we had didn't represent what we wanted. It tasted far too much like tea.

17:48And we could taste it. And then we're like, ah, we're not sure we got it quite right. And so it took two more formulations after that. And as the formulations were improving, we're like, you know what, we actually want our brand presence to really represent what we feel when we drink this and what we want people to feel. So we made the icons bigger. We added the color that was always there in the art pieces to the background. We brought that imagery back. We wanted the fruit to be front and center and clear so that you were aware of the flavor profile as well, which we didn't have. And these are all things that sound so obvious, but it's so funny that when you're in a new space that you've never done before, and I'm a complete beginner and student in this industry, you start to recognize just that's what the audience needs.

18:31The audience needs to know what's the flavor, what's this, what's that. We wanted to call out that it was zero grams of sugar and only five calories, that you could see that clearly. And all of that has made a massive difference in the success of it. And so I think for us, rebranding and renaming allowed us to represent our values better and connect with our community better. And if we hadn't done that, I think it wouldn't have allowed people to revisit it with enthusiasm and energy because, yeah, because it's really challenging to build that relationship with our community. Did you ever think about sort of quitting after the initial brand didn't work or at least the initial formulation or design for you didn't work?

19:13Because, you know, the failure rate's really high in our industry. And I think a lot of people, once they go to market and something doesn't work, that's kind of it. Yeah. I think for me and my wife, we so deeply believe in the benefits of adaptogens. We so deeply believe in, even for us, by the way, like for us to have something fun to consume that isn't full of sugar, that isn't, you know, isn't something that we feel drinking you something that is going to make us feel great and is going to benefit us. I think that was so important to us. And I think I've had enough failure and rejection in previous lines of work that I've come to an understanding that often you have to pivot your path, but you don't have to pivot from what you're trying to build if you really believe in it.

19:57And I think for us, we were like, no, we believe in making goodness accessible and fun and practical and tasty. And so if we believe in that, there is a way. And I think, you know, you were mentioning the podcast earlier. I mean, when I first wanted to launch the podcast, I was turned down by every podcast production company who said, we don't think this is going to be a big podcast. People said to me, Jay, people like to listen to you for three minutes. No one wants to listen to you for an hour. I heard that in meeting rooms. And so I've sat there and heard that many, many times and had that.

20:31So I think I'm at a point in my career where I recognize that that is the way I'm going back to the beautiful old stoic statement of the obstacle is the way as Ryan Holiday beautifully wrote a book on that. I think you start to recognize, wait a minute, everyone I look up to and everyone I admire, they had this happen to them too. So it happening to me is not a failure, it's feedback, it's a way forward. And it's actually helping me understand how to adapt to the future. And so taking the adaptogenic approach again, it's like, I've got to learn to adapt. I've got to learn to be mobile. And I think I've learned that more from consumer products and beverage than I have with anything else where the need to adapt is really high and the challenge is it can take a while to adapt.

21:16And the need to surround yourself with good, trustworthy people who have the experience, who have the know-how in the industry that you're operating in. It's kind of difficult in food and beverage because there's just so many people who are out there, some of whom might say they have a certain type of experience or can help you in a certain way and really can't for one reason or another. That's not to say they aren't good people. It's just, they're not the right fit for you or your brand. How did you find the right people to surround yourself with such that you could develop and scale Juni? Yeah, I think the good thing for me was that I was approaching this with a lot of humility.

21:52And like I said, a student mindset of, I don't know this industry. I don't know this space. I'm here to learn. And I think you have to, for me, there's three things that really make a big difference when I'm making these types of decisions. The first is energy. Do I feel that we're energetically aligned? And what I mean by that is values. Are our values aligned? Do I feel a sense of we believe in the same mission, that we want to make the world a happier, healthier, and more healed space? These are values that are important to me and my wife. And that's where I look at the first gate or the first door.

22:24Then if someone walks through that door and we feel aligned, I look at strategy. Does this person have the right strategic mindset? Do I feel like they have really good ideas and they really understand how to implement it? And do they really recognize what could be our pitfalls? Are they prepared for them? Like, do we strategically get along? And the third one is, do I feel like they're going to get along with other people in the company as we grow? Are they people that people are going to enjoy being managed by as this person's going to lead people? And so energy, strategy, and management have always been three very big focuses for me whenever I'm evaluating it.

23:00And by the way, I think people are evaluating me too. I think people have different visions and dreams. So it's not that my values are right, but they're right for me. And I think that's always worked for me. And it's something that I've noticed when I ignore it, it doesn't go well. But when I implement it, it seems to work. Well, the good news is that you come from a place of fame and reach that a lot of entrepreneurs don't have. How do you incorporate Juni into, say, your podcast or into your Instagram post where you have 15.3 million followers on Instagram? How do you do it in an authentic way?

23:36Yeah, so we added Juni to our podcast from day one, you know, because I actually use it as my podcast pick me up, as I call it, because my podcast required me to, you know, sometimes I interview so like two, three hours each, and it's like being present and being focused. And I know that halfway through my day, I need to have a Juni to like just feel focused again. I think a lot of people can relate to that. We all have that energy slump, but we don't always want that sharp sugar high in a fall again. And so Junie's become a great partner for me in that time of the day as well. And I think to me, it's been a natural integration because it's something I'm drinking during it.

24:10We make it very candid for our guests. My guests know that it's my wife and I's brand and it's up to them whether they try it or they don't. There isn't any force. And I think that's the authenticity of the drink too. It's we want people to try and taste it based on their own choice and freedom. On social media, I think my wife and I have a lot of fun with it because it's in our home. It's what we're drinking. So it's very easy for us to incorporate it in our work because it's part of our daily life. And so again, it becomes really naturally built into all of our content creation. And my wife and I love creating content together.

24:46We enjoy messing around together, being playful together. It's a big part of our relationship. And Junie kind of is that blend we always said we wanted it to be playful and profound that was that's how with the yin and yang of like it's playful it's fun it's tasty it's healthy it's easy at the same time it's really good for you it has all these other amazing herbs that we want to introduce people to so that they can become more aware of what's good for them and what's available to them so it has this playful and profound uh concept and so we've tried to i think for me as well i've been very mindful to only share it when I feel like there's really powerful things that we're doing moments.

25:23You know, we went to Sprouts the other day and had so much fun in store with the staff as well. And then we shared all of that the other day and it got so much love on social. And so I think it's all happening very organically and naturally because it's a part of our life and a part of our day. Can I ask you a bit more of a technical question? You know, there's a lot of different ways to share content, even on a single platform. If you think about just Instagram, you know, stories, reels, just posts, what's been most effective from a social platform standpoint in a very specific way? That's a great question.