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Meet Brody Cord, a determined and ambitious entrepreneur from a small town called Loomis in Northern California. Post college in upstate New York, Brody lived in South America and learned Spanish, then was recruited by H&E Equipment Services to become an outside sales representative. After selling over a million dollars in equipment, Brody made a leap of faith and never looked back.
What are you working on? How did you come up with this idea?
Brody Cord: I am working to make the world a healthier place, one cup of Tenzo at a time. After being confined by the boundaries of corporate America that didn’t let me create, explore, and build I knew I needed to make a change. I quit my day job to throw myself into the fire and truly test my antifragility to see how much I could grow as a human and as an entrepreneur. The decision was difficult, but the impact I can have on the world at Tenzo Tea is monumental in comparison to working for the weekend…
How is your company different?
Brody Cord: The Tenzo Team has more drive and determination that anyone in the industry. We’re constantly iterating, learning and adjusting faster than our competition to optimize matcha sales in the US. We also established incredible relationships with farmers and manufacturers all over Japan to ensure we maintain the best quality matcha for the price.
What’s your dream with your company?
Brody Cord: Our dream is to make the Healthiest Drink on the Planet the drink of choice in America and the World.
If you’re anything like me, you probably love caffeine and many forms of unhealthy energy like coffee, energy drinks and pre-workouts. Although they taste good and give you a quick boost, they’re extremely detrimental to the body over a long period of time. After years of intense caffeine consumption, I started getting palpitations and new something needed to change.
So, when I was introduced to Tenzo and got a natural boost in mood and energy, I realized I could be a part of something bigger than myself. I could provide a healthy way to give people the energy they need without causing jitters, crashes, and more serious health problems caused by repeated caffeine overloads.
How do you creatively advertise?
Brody Cord: 1). I use Linkedin and other social media platforms to document my entrepreneurial journey and inspire a following for myself as well as Tenzo.
2). I constantly make our clients feel like they are my BEST friend. I don’t just make them feel good. I don’t stop at providing incredible value with our products and services. I make them feel like we are BEST friends. Their problems are bigger than my biggest problems, and when I solve them, they tell everyone they know about the Tenzo Team.
What is your core competency?
Brody Cord: Emotional Intelligence. I believe the single limiting factor between where you are now and where you want to be lies in your ability to understand and communicate with other people. Knowing why people do the things they do and being able to sympathize with them will open endless doors in professional and personal settings.
What was your biggest failure and biggest success? What did you learn from them?
Brody Cord: Biggest Failure: lack of time spent learning new technology.
What I Learned: start learning as much as I can every day to 10x my efficiency. As I learn about technological advances, widgets, apps, coding, etc, the more I learn I need to learn!
Biggest Success: deciding to leave a high paying job where I was comfortable, to throw myself into the fire (aka startup life) and truly test my antifragility and ability to learn. In the last month at Tenzo I have learned more than all of 2016 selling construction equipment for a giant conglomerate.
What I learned: The sharpest and truest of blades undergo the most intense stress in the hottest of flames. If you truly want to test yourself and see how quickly you can learn, don’t just move close to the flames and peer in, let go of your desire to maintain comfortability and dive head-first, right into the middle.
Give the readers the best entrepreneurship advice you have.
Brody Cord: Spend 99% of your time creating and 1% consuming. When you create, you solve problems and add value to others. When you consume, you don’t add value to anyone but yourself. Only consume when you need to learn to create
Teach us something about networking:
Brody Cord: GIVE ENERGY during every interaction. Whether you can actually benefit from a connection or add value to someone right now does not matter. But, if you smile, are interested in them, and they enjoy your conversation, they will remember the way you made them feel every time you’re put back in contact. Your network is only as good as your connection with each person. If you are consuming energy, you’re worthless. If you’re always giving energy, you’re infinitely valuable.
What’s something new you’ve learned in the past month?
Brody Cord: Linkedin and Facebook are the two most valuable, and free, tools out there today and anyone can take full advantage if they want to. By building a strong personal brand and network, you can continually leverage it for anything you or your company needs: food bloggers, VC’s, advisors, content creators, marketers, etc.
What do you think you do better than most people?
Brody Cord: Reading people’s emotions, putting myself in other’s shoes, and asking thought provoking questions.
What should an entrepreneur focus on?
Brody Cord: Their customers. Who are your customers? Where do they live? What do they consume? Why do they purchase your product? What do they do everyday? What do they like? What do they hate? Who do they talk to? Do they tell others about your company? How can you better service them? How can you grow them? How can you find more people just like them?
What are some of the best books you’ve ever read?
The Everything Store – Jeff Bezos
When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead – Jerry Weintraub
Zero to One – Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
Elon Musk – Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future – Ashlee Vance
How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
Where do you see yourself and your product in a couple years?
Brody Cord: Hopefully, Tenzo’s matcha green tea will be consumed daily by millions of people worldwide in the coming years, helping make the world a healthier place one cup of matcha at a time. I see myself leading the charge in national and global sales to provide the Healthiest Drink on the Planet to people and businesses all over the world.
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