Huan Xia is on a quest of producing healthier foods. Her company, LusOasis, makes and sells a variety of gluten-free, keto-friendly plant-based pancake mixes.
Her latest venture, Alchemeat, produces a plant-based meat substitute that — unlike what’s currently on the market — mimics the texture of real meat.
Her journey hasn’t been easy. She came to the U.S. with only two suitcases and a smattering of English. But her drive and focus helped her succeed in big corporate America first, and now is helping her in her journey as an entrepreneur. And it turns out that being an immigrant conveys skills and knowledge that help you become an entrepreneur.
How did she do all this? You need to “unleash yourself,” she says. We talk about what this means, and ways you, too, can “unleash yourself!’ Listen to her inspiring story!
Read the transcript of our interview below! Or go here to listen to this inspiring interview!
Doris Nagel 0:40
Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show!
I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour.
This show is for all you entrepreneurs and small business people out there.
Why am I doing this show? Well, I’ve been an entrepreneur, and I’ve helped lots of entrepreneurs over the past 30 years. I’ve seen a lot of many mistakes, and I’ve made so many mistakes. So one of the goals of the show is to help provide information and resources for you entrepreneurs out there. If I can help just one or two of you not make some of those mistakes, then I’ve been successful.
The second goal is to inspire. I found being an entrepreneur, lonely, sometimes confusing, hard to know if you’re on the right track, or where to turn sometimes for good advice.
To help with both those goals, I have guests on the show every week who are willing to share their stories and advice.
And my guest this week is Huan Xia. She is the founder and the CEO of a company called LusOasis. Hers is one of several companies out there these days, helping people eat more wholesome and healthy food.
She’ll share with us today the story of her journey and how she came from carrying, she says, two suitcases and not much English to being a successful female entrepreneur.
Huan, thanks so much for being on the show this week. I really appreciate you being here. Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show.
Xuan Xia
Thank you so much, Doris, for the invitation. And it’s really my pleasure to be here and to share a little bit of my story and journey and to also learn. Your podcast is wonderful as well.
Doris Nagel
Well, thank you for that!
Start out by telling the listeners a little bit about who you are as a person, your background, what you do for fun, and how you came to be an entrepreneur.
Xuan Xia
That’s a lot of questions!
Doris Nagel
I’m sorry! I get so excited that I asked multiple questions. And then my guests don’t know where to start!
Xuan Xia 2:56
No worries. Those are great questions, and very profound as well. Speaking about who I am is really a profound question. Because we all have many, many different aspects.
We can describe ourselves, I guess, from our outside. If people look at me, they will see they will see my ethnic background. I’m Asian American, and this month is actually a celebration month for AAPI. So I’m very glad we’re taking this time to do this podcast, because it’s very meaningful for the that community.
To your point earlier, Doris, I really love your sense of community. And that’s why we are here together. We want to learn from each other and support each other.
Then professionally, I am a food scientist by training. I got my masters at science from Penn State. And I since then, for last 12 years, I have been in food science. I started my career in big food companies like Mars and McCain Foods.
During pandemic, I quit my executive job and started LusOasis, really because of my passion to help people with healthier food alternatives. Food that not only satisfies our tastes and has flavor, but also brings joy to both their body and mind holistically.
Doris Nagel
You left an executive job at a big food company. Why did you do that? That’s a very scary thing to do, especially in a pandemic when we don’t know what’s going to happen!
Xuan Xia 4:40
Well, I guess my route of entrepreneurship began a much longer time ago. [It’s only] in recent years that I finally gained more clarity in my own mind.
I am really thankful for the vegan diet that I started about five years ago. It not only helped my physical well being, but also brought me more mental clarity about what I really wanted to be when I grow up.
And so [starting LusOasis is] coming back to the foundation of who I am and what I want to do. Especially in the pandemic, when I see a lot of people struggling with compromised health and which made it much easier to get COVID.
So that made me think they if they eat healthier, and that may be able to help their immune system, and then they might suffer less. I saw this coming from my own experience, and so that’s my basic motivation for starting the company.
Doris Nagel
That’s quite profound as well. I totally agree with you. I don’t think it’s just COVID, but certainly people with compromised immune systems or who have health issues, any sort of thing that happens makes those people more susceptible.
You mentioned the vegan diet, and it’s certainly something that has been in the news, but I don’t know if everybody really knows what vegan means. Tell us more about that.
Xuan Xia 6:30
A vegan diet means your diet is based 100% from plant based plant based foods. So no, no dairy and no eggs.
If you eat dairy and eggs, that’s a vegetarian diet, so a vegan diet is actually pretty strict. It’s only plant-based foods, no animal-related food at all.
Doris Nagel
So how do vegans get the proteins that they need?
Xuan Xia
There’s a variety of legumes, beans, and lentils that provide a lot of protein. Even vegetables [provide] a little bit of protein as well.
So if you can eat say 20 to 30 different varieties of plants of vegetables, fruits and bean every week, your nutrition will be pretty good. But the problem is that if people think vegan is only about salads, then that’s not enough for good nutrition. So you have to be very careful about all the other plant-based protein you need to eat.
Doris Nagel 7:35
I’m curious about what made you want to start your own company. I mean, clearly, you could have said, “I don’t want to work for one of these big precious food companies anymore. I want to find a company [to work for] that is more conscientious about health and healthy eating.”
But you decided instead to start your own company. And I think that’s quite a different thing. So talk about how you made that choice.
Xuan Xia 8:10
Great question. I think you clearly said something very important. It’s not only about healthy food itself, it’s also about my own entrepreneurial nature.
One thing about a corporate job — for me, it was very stable, with actually a very high and stable income. And I learned so much. And it’s great training. It was a great training ground for my professional life. You have a lot of freedom to learn, and a lot of freedom to think and talk.
However, I found myself often limited in the opportunity to execute. I didn’t have as much freedom to execute my ideas in many ways, because corporate is finely segmented into different departments. You can only be attached to one department and for certain projects, you needed more scope. And pretty much every corporation is like that when it gets big.
So as someone who’s an innovator by nature, I felt a lack of opportunity for me to do more, or offer as much as I wanted. And I felt that limited my growth a little bit.
Doris Nagel
I don’t know about you, but I found it frustrating working in a big company. It’s difficult to be what I call an agent of change in a big company, because I used to joke with my friends that I felt like it was trying to change the course of the Titanic, or some other very, very large boat. You can work very hard and nudge it and eventually, maybe it’ll change a degree or two in in direction.
But I think it’s a challenge at all very large companies. They need to reinvent themselves, but yet they’re structured in a way that makes it very difficult for that to happen.
Xuan Xia 10:00
Yeah, certainly. And the speed to the market [for new products] can be quite slow, because going from the innovative ideas to pushing products to consumers plates it takes a long time.
And like you mentioned, I am an immigrant. After you go through the immigration process, and all the challenges I went through coming from different country to United States, you become much more adventurous. You’re more risk-taking as well.
I also see a lot of opportunities [because of that experience], which really allows me to embrace risk sometimes and sometimes even create challenges for yourself to do that.
Doris Nagel
We haven’t really talked about your business, LusOasis. What does it make? What kind of customers do you serve? Oh, there I go again, asking multiple questions!
Start with telling us about your business and what you make.
Xuan Xia 11:50
We are focused on creating plant-based alternatives to popular food items that are clean and tasty. We first created line of delicious baking mixes for pancakes and waffles. And we intentionally created a trifecta of value for our consumers: gluten free, keto-friendly, and vegan.
All three of these are some of the most sought after characteristics for food these days in the market. We created four amazing flavors which are never seen: raw chocolaty, tomato basil, sweet and savory, and savory chili.
They’re designed to really stimulate your taste buds, from sweet to savory to even really spicy. So you will never get bored with them at the breakfast time, and you can even use these beyond breakfast.
Doris Nagel
Let’s peel back some of this. You mentioned keto-friendly. What is that?
Xuan Xia 13:46
The keto diet is a really big thing these days. It’s focused on low carbs to help you boost your metabolism to burn calories quicker than a normal diet. Our products are keto-friendly. They are not necessarily keto, although our products have fewer carbs than traditional pancake or waffle mix that are made with, for example, wheat flours. Our leading ingredient is almond flour, so it’s more protein-based and nut-based to help people to reduce the carb intake a little bit for these popular items.
Doris Nagel
You also mentioned gluten free. And I’ve seen a lot in the news about that. And a lot of people think gluten is not so great. Why is that? Is it important for everybody to have less gluten in their diet, or is it just some people that are particularly sensitive to it?
Xuan Xia
We know that the gluten allergies are going on up almost every year in United States. For some people, gluten free is a necessity.
Gluten is a type of protein from wheat. And it’s a protein that’s not very easy to digest. That’s why some people develop an allergic reaction to that. Because for them, in the beginning, a small amount of gluten will be okay. But if you eat too much of it — for example, somebody who loves bread — they may begin to develop this kind of allergy. Because by nature, this protein is pretty hard to digest in your body, and it tends to actually stick in your intestine membranes and will linger there for a long time, not passing out of your body.
So I think for people without a gluten problem, a moderate amount is fine. Of course, not too much. And it’s like everything else, moderation is always good.
Doris Nagel
I know more and more people are aware of gluten allergies. Do you think that gluten allergies are on the increase? Or is it just we’re becoming more aware of it? And if it they’re on the increase, why do you think that is?
Xuan Xia 14:40
This is my purely guess — I haven’t really studied because it is going another medical field. But I do think some of it’s awareness, for sure. Because the detection methods say 50 years ago were not the best in for detection.
Doris Nagel
I don’t think people even knew about gluten allergies 50 years ago.
Xuan Xia 15:00
Yes. But I do think the modern diet also is leading to more allergies, and not only for gluten. We also see the other allergies in people’s diet incrasing. In general, we have a lot of opportunity to improve our diet in the United States.
Doris Nagel
That’s an understatement! Why pancakes, though?
Xuan Xia 15:50
Coming from food industry for 12 years, I know the food manufacturing, scaling up, and commercialization process very well. So as a first product for the startup, I wanted to do something very easy to commercialize and scale up.
And that way, I can spend more time on the business. Because as entrepreneur, you’re often by yourself.
As far as the process, we tested like 300 different recipes or products. And we think it’s a great format, and also have lots of benefits we can easily design to the product as well.
Doris Nagel 16:15
I was getting hungry as you were describing it!
There’s something comforting about breakfast food here in North America, certainly. And waffles and pancakes are pretty popular.
Who are most of your customers? How do you find them? Or how do they find you?
Xuan Xia
We have three categories of customers. One for sure are vegan people on this diet, or those who are trying to be vegan or are vegetarians. They are about 10% of Americans – that’s actually a pretty big population.
Doris Nagel
That’s huge. I had no idea.
Xuan Xia
Yes, And the second group is even broader — I call them health-conscious people – who are constantly looking for a better diet, a healthier diet, and cleaner ingredients.
Our baking mix only has eight or nine ingredients, and they are all whole-foods-based, so that everybody can understand what’s the ingredients mean. There’s no hidden, secret ingredient. So a lot of healthy conscious people really love that they can understand every single ingredient, they understand every single thing they eat. So that’s another advantage we have, too.
The third group is those health-compromised people. Their doctors have told them they have to eat healthy now; otherwise it would jeopardize their life.
Doris Nagel
How do they find you? Do you sell products online? Do they find you via Google searches? Are you in stores or at farmers markets? How do they find you?
Xuan Xia 18:00
I want to find all of them too. [laughing]
Yes, we are pretty much doing 360 digital marketing, because I find that it’s most effective way to find more people.
We are on Amazon, we sell from our own website, we do Google ads, Facebook ads, all the social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook. And so people online can definitely find us.
We’d like to do more work with people who have less access to digital marketing. So I was on WGN-TV last year for Chicago’s Cooking Show.
Doris Nagel
Congratulations!
Xuan Xia 18:37
Thank you. That definitely attracted some customers who only look at TV and conventional advertising.
We also do Farmer’s Markets locally, so we use lots of different channels. And we also rely on word of mouth with a lot of community help in the Chicago area.
Doris Nagel
Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I’m guessing that a significant chunk of your customer base skews on the younger side. People who are trying vegan diets are certainly trying to eat more healthy — that certainly describes my daughter and all of her friends, who are their 20s. All of those people seem to talk a lot about this.
So for them, I’m guessing the digital approach is a very natural matching with that demographic.
Xuan Xia 18:45
Yes, definitely. We do find that. But there are also some of the older generations how love this, too. Because pancakes and waffles are a traditional American favorite food, and so people like them for family gatherings as well.
And I find a lot of moms actually love to cook these if they have gluten free kids. They love to cook for them when they come back home. So I actually have a lot of customers like that.
Doris Nagel
How did you come up with the name for the company? It’s an interesting name. It’s not gluten free pancakes or gluten free keto friendly waffles. It’s LusOasis. What’s the significance behind the name?
Xuan Xia 20:21
It actually comes from my dream. So Lus means elucidate. And so the name is inspired by our hope to elucidate your paths to a healthy food oasis.
And I say it’s coming from my dream. I was trying to figure out a name for the business. And one morning I woke up and I dreamed about the Crescent Moon Lake in the in the Gobi Desert.
I don’t know if people know about the Silk Road in western China, but it was a pivotal transportation route for many business in ancient times. And the Gobi Desert is on the Silk Road in the Inner Mongolia area.
Crescent Moon Lake is actually very famous, and used to be very big in the Silk Road era, providing people with lodging and food and water as people traveled the Silk Road.
Nowadays, it’s only I think a tenth of the size because of the desertification. So it’s very small now, and has become a crescent moon shape versus a full lake. But it’s very beautiful. If you Google a picture of Crescent Moon Lake in the Gobi Desert, it’s such a beautiful thing. You’ll see like this nice blue color in the yellow desert. But it’s still shrinking.
I think that’s why it was in my dream. I feel like our food is an oasis of healthy. Healthy food is becoming increasingly difficult to find – it’s becoming smaller and smaller in the big desert.
Doris Nagel
The desert of processed foods and McDonald’s, right?
Xuan Xia 22:21
Yes. But I want to show people there is still a path.
We want to enlighten or elucidate this path, so they still access this precious water in the desert. I want to inspire people, to give people hope. To show people we can still do it if you notice the path to go down.
Doris Nagel
It’s a wonderful story. I really, really love it.
For many businesses, the name doesn’t have nearly the thought and meaning and layers that yours does. So thank you for sharing that.
Xuan Xia
The logo says that, too. So if you look at our logo, there’s a water in the bottom half of the circle, and you have the sunray that looks like a fork on the top left, and then you have plants and beautiful flowers coming from the right corner. So we’re trying to show the sun and water bringing the plant life together.
Doris Nagel
I love it!
Talk a little bit about how you got started. So you had the idea for this, and you mentioned you were testing the idea. Were you testing it in your kitchen? Did you find a space? Talk about how you got started.
Xuan Xia 23:41
I got started in my own kitchen, because it’s cheap. We didn’t have to be commercialized at that point – it was more about ideation and making the products.
Like I mentioned earlier, we created so many different versions. Initially, our product was not a baking mix at all. Actually, we made these Pizzelle cookies — like those shells on the outside of the ice cream cone.
So, with our ingredients for our baking mix, we can easily make a Pizzelle cookie. Actually, it was very tasty too! But we realized they are very hard to process and the manual labor to make them would be very, very high. And I felt like that was not a good thing as a startup to do that first. We can do that later.
We also create a bunch of vegan dishes that we thought we probably can commercialize, too, but I felt like the process the scaling up would be difficult
Doris Nagel
How did you decide on your four flavors? Did you have friends taste them? How did you put together market research on which way to go forward?
Xuan Xia 24:45
With food industries, there’s naturally a lot of places you can find a marketing trends. For example, Google Trends is a great tool. You can type in flavors you think could be popular understand how those are trending these days.
In general in the food industry right now, our customer base is much more segmented. People are looking for novel, interesting flavors with ethnic influences sometimes. And savory breakfasts is a trend. People love sweets for sure. But to reduce the sugar intake a little bit, people are starting to choose more savory breakfast items.
And spiciness is definitely a bold trial. I feel like some people are more adventurous because of how Mexican food has influenced everything and so would like a spicey option as well. And I also had another inspiration for the savory spicy flavor because one of my friend is diabetic. He loves the traditional sugary American cereals, but he cannot do that anymore. So he would like Parmesan cheese and jalapeno peppers into his cereal, and that left him very satisfied. So I think chile could be another flavor we try.
And of course we did a lot of tasting with friends and family to make sure people love the taste. We changed the intensity of some of the flavors based on that. The flavors have to be really balanced because we have different tastes — not just sweet. Our sense of taste is complex, so we had to make sure the tastes were very balanced so that people would like it.
Doris Nagel 26:38
So, continue your story about how you moved from your kitchen, to where you are today.
Xuan Xia
Once we settled on a prototype and we knew we wanted to do a baking mix, then we needed to find a commercial space where we could properly produce it , with a food safety certificate, and in compliance with all the regulations so that we could sell out product to the public.
Naturally, we searched online, and we found The Hatchery in Chicago. And it’s such a great place!
They not only provide commercial kitchen space for us to produce the products in a safe environment. But they are also a food incubator, a food entrepreneur incubator. They provide resources like marketing, sales, and lots of other types of support. It’s almost like bring all the food industry into a community, so we can support each other we can learn from each other.
And that’s where we went next after our own kitchen. So I really highly recommend The Hatchery to anyone who wants to be in the food business. It’s kind of a one stop shop.
Doris Nagel
You’re not the first guest to have sung the praises of The Hatchery. Someone from The Hatchery will be on the show soon to talk about that.
Talk about what happened at The Hatchery and how that helped you really helped you and your business really take off?
Xuan Xia 34:13
I learned many things from The Hatchery. As I mentioned, it’s a community. I learned a lot from my fellow entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is not like a cookie cutter. You meet different kinds of problem every day. And by having your support community behind it, it makes you feel like you’re not alone and you can leverage each others’ experience.
That’s kind of foundation or support that I got. And the commercial kitchen at The Hatchery really provided us a great space where we can do all the production, including mixing all the ingredients together and packaging them into a beautiful pouch, sealing them, and get them commercially ready.
So from there, we were able to launch on Amazon very quickly.
Doris Nagel
Do they help you with things like packaging, too?
Xuan Xia
They help with the resources. It’s almost like they paint you with a roadmap. So to be a food business and sell to the general public, what do you what do you need to know? What do you need to do? They provide you basically with a checklist. Packaging design was part of that. And from there, I was able to connect with the other resources in the industry to find the people to design and print my packaging.
Doris Nagel
What a phenomenal resource to find. So if you’re in the Chicago area, and you’re interested in food and beverage, you should definitely check them out.
If you’re elsewhere, there may very well be incubators focused on food and beverage that that would be a great resource for you.
I’m guessing it was several months to decide on the product, test the product, find The Hatchery, and get products to market? How did you find funding during that whole time?
Xuan Xia 30:08
To be honest, I’m still bootstrapping. I know the food industry very well, actually. And I was very cost-conscious as well. I didn’t really spend too much money. And I mostly utilized my own time and my circle of friends, and found cost-effective contractors and agents to help me out with things I don’t know.
So I can still go without being paid for a little bit drawing on my own savings. In the beginning when you start a business, you’re not going to earn money very quickly. I was prepared with a pool of money to get me to the stage where I can do fundraising.
So the reality is that you are going to have to fund your own your earnings for a couple of years. That’s very natural.
Doris Nagel
What do you see as the future of the company? Where do you see the company in two to three years if you’re successful?
Xuan Xia 31:50
Well, I will digress a little bit if you don’t mind.
To me, it’s very normal as an entrepreneur that you take risks. You test the market quickly, and if you are not afraid to fail, then you are free to try new things as well.
You asked me earlier why I chose the baking mix to start the company. And the main reason is that this was easiest to commercialize and scale up. It required very little of my efforts on the production side because I really know how to do go about it.
However, baking mixes are really a very crowded category. And when I thought about that, I got the idea for a transition. And I tend to act very quickly. Starting with baking mixes gave me a lot of great insights into the commercialization process. And I learned so much about marketing and sales as well as we launched the product to market — and we are doing well, too.
However, to your point about funding, that is important. Eventually we need to be able to raise capital. But the sales volume for our baking mixes may not be growing quickly enough to attract funding.
I began to think about what else I could make to really scale up quickly. Something that would allow us to raise money and build a team and bring more products to the consumer.
I started to think what I could leverage most as an entrepreneur, what are my best assets? I needed to prioritize and capitalize my expertise in the most effective way to bring value to the company.
So about six to nine months ago, I started to develop a new product. And this product has much higher barriers to entry. This time there are IP strategies, patents behind the product, which a much higher barrier for people to compete in the market.
I’m very excited about our new product which we are in the process of launching. It’s plant-based whole cut meat. Alternative protein is the hottest category in the food industry today. It’s growing very fast, especially in the last few years. Because we know protein is always very important as a nutrition base.
If you look at market today, there are many ground meat alternatives on the market. There are beef patties, meatballs, etcetera. However, you don’t find any whole cut protein alternatives – things like whole cut steak, whole cut pork, those kinds of things.
Everything is ground because that’s much easier to simulate meat. It’s much, much more challenging to create the muscle-like texture of whole cut meats.
But that’s what we have created. We are very proud to have created the world’s first commercially ready, affordable home cut beef product. It’s tender, and juicy.
There are multiple reasons why I wanted to pivot to do this. First, because protein for vegans is most important. Secondly, this is the area I can really leverage my food technology background to develop a proprietary ingredient and processing technology that nobody has on the market.
So we’re going to really differentiate ourselves, in the hopes of being able to attract investors attention very quickly and raise capital very quickly.
Doris Nagel 35:00
That is amazing. Well, you certainly are an entrepreneur: you make quick decisions, get to market quickly, get good feedback quickly, and pivot quickly if need to.
That leads me to something else in your background that you touched on. As an immigrant, you mentioned you’re more willing to take risks. And before the show, I did a little research.
In fact, there are quite a few studies out there that show that immigrants are more likely than not to become entrepreneurs, they’re way more likely than the average population. They’re also more likely to be successful at being an entrepreneur than the average population.
Why do you think that is? What is it about your background and I’m sure those some of the other immigrants you’ve talked to, as part of your journey?
Xuan Xia 37:04
A great question. I’d like to see those studies, too.
Just speaking for myself, I came to the United States when I was 20. I think when you take these risks, or go through these challenges in our early life, you kind of build this type of confidence and belief system in yourself to be less fearful, and to be a little more bold than others. Because you went through that before, and you know how it went. It’s almost like you’ve played this game before, so you know you can play again.
I believe everything is created by yourself. What I mean is that your external world is a reflection of your internal world. If you’re always confident, if you always believe in your heart, then you’re going to influence others. You’re going to attract people who believe in you, people who support you as well.
You know, I’m a fan of Victor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” And we know as human beings we can expand ourselves, improve ourselves in a certain way. And we all want to live a happy harmonious, peaceful, fulfilled life.
For me, entrepreneurship is very important for me to fulfill my life. I feel like it helps me to expand and helps me to improve. The road block is always yourself. If you conquer your fear, if you remove all these barriers, then the sky is the limit. Nothing can stop you.
Doris Nagel 38:45
I don’t know if the studies are actually completely clear about why that is. There are a bunch of different hypotheses. And there may be more than one factor at work.
Some have argued that — just as you say — immigrant entrepreneurs have already essentially risked it all. You came to the United States with two suitcases and not even much English. And so how terrifying is that? You left your entire social structure, a world in which you were comfortable, and you voluntarily got on a plane or a boat, and you’ve left it all.
I think that that alone is just an astonishing accomplishment that I think many people forget when they’re talking to immigrants. It takes a lot of courage to be able to do that. And as you say, once you’ve done that, nothing seems quite so risky anymore.
Xuan Xia 40:00
I agree. And I think for most of us, we do it because we have maybe an adventurous nature. It’s almost like when people play games. They go to a new place, and they find different enemies, stuff like that in the game. But it makes them excited, because in the game, you know you are safe, right? You know you are safe, even though you have all these new things going on. It’s just part of the game, right?
I think reality is the same thing. If you remove the fear, then it becomes all excitement, like you’re in a new land, exploring new stuff. If you remove the fear of losing, or of people judging you, or whatever the identity problems you have, then it’s fine. You realize it’s all judgments. And if you remove all of these, that’s totally fine. You are just lucky to come into a new world to play. You just play your game.
Doris Nagel
That’s a wonderful way to look at it.
I saw another set of studies that showed that immigrants are very good at being entrepreneurs, because they make unusual connections.
Do you think there’s something to that? Maybe having lived in a different culture, and being essentially bi-cultural allows you to make connections or see things that maybe people who haven’t been through that experience might not connect or see?
Xuan Xia
Yeah, definitely. First, there is a bigger sense of inclusion, right? Because coming from a different country, first of all, you have to kind of include yourself into different culture.
Doris Nagel
Very good point. Because there’s inclusion of others, but wait, I have to include myself here, too.
Xuan Xia 48:53
So I think you’re naturally more open, because you just have to be. To fit in, you’re naturally forging the old elements in to new elements all the time. It becomes a habit or something in your genes – you tend to transform your genes because you’re forced to adapt so much. S
Because of this type of attitude, entrepreneurship becomes much easier. Because basically, in the entrepreneurship world, you see the opportunity all the time, you see the challenge all the time, but it’s all about forging what you have into something new and creating something even better.
It’s almost like art, right? Where you have some old elements and putting some new elements together and you create something more beautiful,
Doris Nagel
I absolutely love that analogy!
What have been the best parts so far about having your own business so far?
Xuan Xia 42:31
is always about managing your own psychology. That’s the part I really want to improve through entrepreneurship. Because I guess my biggest motivation is always about self improvement.
In the beginning, it might have been about improving myself to achieve more success. But at this point of my life, I think it’s really about improving myself to become happier and more peaceful every day.
So the challenge is always that you you’re wearing so many hats and you’re not going to finish everything you want to do. In fact, I was telling a colleague yesterday that I planned like 10 things to do today. But maybe today, I only end up doing 20% of that, because 80% of the time, I find some other more interesting things to do.
Doris Nagel
So as you say, managing yourself.
But I think sometimes setting unreasonable expectations can be discouraging, because you set yourself a list of 10 things but you only did two. It’s easy to beat yourself up about it.
Xuan Xia 43:47
Yes. So I have to look at things much more organically.
Because it’s totally different than a corporate job. Which has very clear goals and expectations. There, you do certain things every day, right? You can sometimes you fill eight hours.
But [entrepreneurship] is very organic. Even though maybe I only did two things today, I didn’t really rest or get lazy. I just did some other things not on the list. But sometimes organically, those things not on the list will have a multiplying effect.
That happens very often, actually. And I find it fascinating, and is making me happy. Because I find that I often need to really follow my heart.
I’m a logical person. But when you have things are very overwhelming on your desk, you have to follow your heart. Do what’s the most conscious thing to do at the moment and allow yourself just be in the moment, not thinking about too many things.
Because many times there are these linchpin things. Once you get that thing down very deeply, you find you probably don’t need to do the other five things, even though I didn’t know that at the moment. Things seem to unwind themselves eventually.
Doris Nagel 45:00
Yes. I think that kind of awareness is really important.
And there is the other side of it — you start to realize what you’re good at, and how you’re really contributing the best and most to the organization.
Sometimes it helps you realize there are certain things that need to get done, but that maybe it would be better to find somebody else to do them.
For example, if you hate financial things and bookkeeping, you can do them. But because you don’t like it or aren’t good at it, you find you are way behind in your billing, for example, and invoicing things. I’m just giving an example.
So has that process happened to you already as well?
Xuan Xia 54:15
Yeah, definitely, you need to let it go.
Many times, it’s because of taking risk is about choose the right thing to do. And then sometimes you have to let something go.
For example, I tried my best to do social media management and some ecommerce things. It’s not my core competency sale after learning that one year. So I was fortunate enough to find somebody who’s really good at it and manage that for me. But it’s a process you know, you have to learn a little bit as a as somebody owns a business you need to know how to do that in general, and have somebody else helping you you know exactly like you can match the goal and be much more strategic and tactical at the same time.
Doris Nagel
You almost need to do that as an entrepreneur if you want to grow. Because if you’re going to try to do everything yourself, you’re very limited in what you can to do. And there’s a LOT to be done!
What’s been the best part about your journey so far as an entrepreneur?
Xuan Xia 47:05
I’m best part, I feel like I get to know myself more deeply. Because as I said earlier, I’ve been able to work more organically versus within a framework. And that really suits me better. This may not be typical for all entrepreneurs, because I’m the person who like to innovate and create new things. So by not following a framework and by just do things more consciously, I found out I can accomplish much more than I imagined.
And that makes me happier. It makes me feel like I can be more accomplished, and that I can contribute more in certain areas than when I started off. I know that sounds vague, but it’s how I feel.
Doris Nagel 47:50
I’m guessing you get some external validation from customers who tell you how the products helped them, or how much they enjoy them.
I think that’s one of the appeals of consumer packaged goods, as opposed to consulting services or tax advice ot meeting planning — things like that.
I’m guessing you get a fair amount of very specific and direct feedback from customers. People who tell you they enjoyed the product, or it tasted great, or it’s helped them be more healthy — things like that.
Xuan Xia
Yeah, certainly, that’s a great point about the consumer product world. And it certainly has been one of the biggest motivations for me every day. It really warms my heart when I look at our Amazon reviews and people will say, this is a healthier choice, it helped me, or that the product is so delicious, that our children really enjoyed. Yes.
Doris Nagel
Looking back on your journey so far, what advice would you give to other women entrepreneurs or other immigrant entrepreneurs who are just starting out?
Xuan Xia 49:15
I would give the advice that somebody gave me before I started, and I am very grateful for it.
The advice is: unleash yourself. Because I always think the barrier is ourself. Nobody else can really create a barrier for you, if you change yourself enough.
And it’s also about being free from our identity, free from the color of our skin, from where we come from, our social status…
Doris Nagel
our gender?
Xuan Xia 49:51
All those things. We need to stop caring so much about it. We need to be OK about all those things. And because then we can be more polite, and we can be more socially appropriate.
I think all human beings are equal. And we all have our unique talent and potential that we need to express, because the world deserves each of us and our lives.
Once you unleash yourself, you’re going to shine wherever you go. Each of us will shine very differently. But that’s just being the best of ourselves every day. Make yourself the happiest person, and make other people happy, too.
Doris Nagel
Wonderful advice!
What advice would you give for people who struggle to unleash themselves? What could they do? Maybe what have you done or what have you seen that has helped you unleash yourself?
Xuan Xia 50:51
It’s a great question. It’s a such a process. I’m still working on that.
One of the biggest things I wanted to improve is some compulsive behavior I have. I think we all have some compulsive because of the noises, the background from when we grow up, the influences even from our dearest family members — they tend to influence us the most.
As in what helped me the best, I go back to the first question you asked me: what do you do for fun. I love meditation and yoga. And that helped me to calibrate myself, and helped me to remove some noises. And that helped me to find myself truly.
So I think unleashing yourself is essentially an inner journey to unleash yourself, you cannot rely on anybody else to unleash you, you have to unleash yourself through recognize yourself be very well they may in the moment, and and just looking inward and a well what do you want, et cetera.
Doris Nagel
Wonderful advice.
Before I let you go, I want to give you a chance to tell people how to find out about your products — where to find them, where to learn more, and maybe even connect with you if they’re interested in learning more about your journey, or The Hatchery, or something else you’ve touched on today.
Xuan Xia
I appreciate the opportunity, and I certainly enjoyed every bit of our conversation. You use of storytelling made me at in telling my own.
People can find me many places. I have to be public in advertising and selling a food products.
We’re on Instagram and Facebook at LusOasis.
You can find me mostly on LinkedIn — I’m pretty active there. You just search my name, and you are welcome to connect with me there.
And I also want to let people know again that we are very excited to launch our new plant based meat. It’s called Alchemeat. It’s not under the LusOasis brand, because we wanted to really differentiate the magic transformation process behind this product – we transform plant protein into meat with texture. So the new brand name comes from the word alchemy,
Doris Nagel
I love it! Well, I want to say thanks again for being on the show this week, and for spending a few minutes sharing your story with us today.
Xuan Xia
My true pleasure, Doris.
Good luck with everything. And I enjoyed so much being here today. Let me know anything else I can do to support yout.
Doris Nagel
That’s wonderful. And thank you to all my listeners as well. You’re the reason I do this.
You can find more helpful information and resources on my consulting website, which is globaoacityservices.com. Or I recently have created a radio show dedicated website called thesavvyentrepreneur.org. And you’ll see a growing library there of podcast tools, blogs and other helpful resources for entrepreneurs and small business there that are all be free. So check them out.
I always love hearing from you listeners. My door is always open. I welcome comments, questions, suggestions. You want to be a guest you know a great guest or maybe you just want to shoot the breeze. Reach out to me at dnagel@thesavvyentrepreneur.org. You’ll always get an answer back from me, I promise.
Be sure to tune in again next week at 11am Central/ noon Eastern for another great guest.
But until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
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