I want to share this message from my Aunt Sue, who has been a huge support and amazing cheerleader for the Maté Journey…
Here’s a little Yerba Mate story for you. I too was introduced to it by your enlightened Father, when Faye and I moved to Iowa. He was escorting the convoy that was Lynda ,Darryl, Faye and me. I tend to get narcoleptic when I drive long distances and, on top of that, Mom’s repeatedly repeated questions were contributing to my sleepy state. So, at the first rest stop, I told Tom of my state and he quietly suggested that I put two Yerba Mate tea bags ( he had a good supply ) in my drinking water and voila! the rest of the trip was a breeze. I’ve never been a user of caffeine in any form, but when I eat a large amount of chocolate chips, I get an uncomfortable jittery buzz, so I know the effects it can have. The effect from the Yerba Mate brought nothing of that, only clarity, focus and energy. Now, I always take it with me when I drive long distances. And also, now that I know that it’s so good for me, I’m drinking it periodically here at home when I need a lift to my geriatric life style.[video]
The Maté Journey has led to a lot of interesting conversations. Most fall into a few catagories:
1) People who have never heard of Maté and think that I am crazy. Fair enough. (Actually, this group can be further split into people who are interested in the crazy and those who are afraid of the crazy. It’s actually pretty interesting to hear the different responses.)
2) People who have tried Maté once or twice, likely on a trip to South America.
3) People who drink Maté all the time.
All the groups are interesting to me and members from all the different groups have actually become contributors to the Journey (Thank you!!) However, there is one question that is very specific to group #2 that I want to address. The first question I get from group #2 is…
“So, do you have a gourd and ughh whats that straw thing called again….”
“Yes, I have a gourd and a BOMBILLA” I always reply.
“Nice!! I loved that! Where can you get a gourd and bombilla around here?” Is always the next question.
The sad part is I didn’t know. I went to the South American store in the Mission District of SF and still couldn’t find them. You can always get them online, but that’s never as fun or interesting (or personal, which I think is important in gourd selection. It’s like picking out a peice of art that you like.)
Gourd Searchers rejoice! I’ve found the source. By an extremely chance encounter, I met the manager of The Caning Shop in Berkeley, CA. They don’t sell Maté gourds, persay. They specialize in gourd craft! They can help you design and decorate your very own Maté gourd. How cool!
I spent the afternoon learning as much as I could about gourd craft and talking to the Jim, the owner and internationally acclaimed Gourd Crafter about the basics of gourd craft and the keys to a great Maté gourd. More to come on Gourd Crafting….
As I write this, my Kickstarter project is half way through the funding period. Unfortunately, I’m nowhere near half way to my funding goal, in fact I haven’t even raised 10 percent of my goal. I’ve basically given up hope that I will be able to reach my stated goal, which is fine. I’m still going ahead with my idea but now I need to figure out another way to fund it. I’ll raid my 401k if need be, this damn thing is going to happen! At this point, I figure the best thing I can do is share some lessons from a failing project so future Kickstarters can avoid making the same mistakes. Kind of like donating my body to science.
1) Have a Good Idea. This seems like a no brainer, but it’s worth noting anyway. My project, the “Great Maté Journey” seemed like a great idea to me: I could give some meaning and purpose to my travels to South America, I could learn a ton about my favorite drink, I could share my journey with other maté drinkers who were thinking about making a similar trip, I could educate people about the health benefits of maté and maté drinking, etc. I thought I had it figured out. I actually ran the idea by a few friends and they told me it was a cool idea. There’s only one thing I forgot to take into account: NOBODY CARES. Well, that’s not completely true, my parents kind of care. But for the most part, nobody gives a crap what you want to do. Most people will only take interest in things that will help them, or help them help others. It’s not about me (or you), it’s about helping people. I have every intention of using my trip for the greater good, but I didn’t do a great job of conveying that message. Successful projects make other peoples lives better, they give their contributors a warm and fuzzy feeling. Crappy projects don’t.
2) Be Honest. It’s so easy to spot something unauthentic. Everybody knows when you’re not telling the truth (or even the whole truth). Every human being, whether they know it or not, has a built-in bullshit detector and nobody is going to contribute to something that isn’t from the heart. A reader will always forgive a storyteller that over-exaggerates a story, it makes it more interesting. However, it’s impossible to keep a reader enthralled when you hold back any of the truth. With my project, I definitely want to learn everything I can about maté, but I also want to ride horses with the Gauchos in Patagonia, see Iguazu Falls, practice my Spanish, learn the tango, and fall in love with a beautiful Argentinian woman. That’s the whole story. I guarantee it will make for a better story, and I probably should have just explained it that way from the beginning. The maté is important, but it needs to be a part of a bigger story.
3) Set a Realistic Goal. “Oh cool, here’s a way to raise money for my big idea! Now if everyone I know just donates $5 then I can raise {Insert overly ambitious goal here}” I think this was what I was thinking when I started my project. I bet this is what all the other failed project were thinking, too. It’s natural to want to throw the total project cost as your goal, but it might not be the best strategy. Crowd-funding is really cool, but it’s really new. You can’t expect it to fund the whole project (it might, but don’t count on it.) I think a better mentality for my project was to use Kickstarter as a small victory. Something that showed I could get a moderate level of interest in my project. I should have set the bar lower and then easily reached my goal. After receiving the Kickstarter support, I could have gone for sponsorship from a maté company, or pitched the story to a magazine or newspaper. There are a ton of ways to get more funding, don’t expect crowd-funding to do it all. Instead, think of Kickstarter as a springboard of support for bigger things.
4) Don’t Count on Your Friends. I mean, of course count on your friends, just not to support your Kickstarter project. I showed a friend of mine the project in person on his computer while I was working on it, in order to get his opinion.
“Very cool, I’ll probably donate at the $50 level.”
“Nice!” I thought. Turns out that was the worst thing he could have said. Not only did he never donate, but he totally over-inflated my expectations about what I could raise. And what am I going to say, it’s hard to bug people for money that they said they would donate. It puts a weird tension on the friendship. It took me three weeks of bothering my brother to get him to finally donate. As a general rule, take everyone you think would definitely contribute and multiply that by 5%. The real gains are made by getting people you don’t know to contribute, which brings me to the next lesson…
5) Have a Marketing Plan. What separates your project from the rest of the pack at Kickstarter? How are people going to find your project? I put a lot of time into my video and write up for my project. I’ve spent a lot of time writing blog posts (including this!) and talking to people about the project. I didn’t spend nearly enough time on a marketing plan. I’ve only recently started using Twitter Search to find people who are interested in maté, I think that’s a start. I think successful projects do this well. In order to get your project to the finish line, expect to spend more time on marketing than you do on content. Don’t skimp on content, but expect to spend a lot more time on marketing.
I really hope this message is helpful for someone and that no one else makes the same humiliating mistakes as I have. I wish I would’ve read it before I started my project. If you want to see what remains of a failing Kickstarter project, check out www.greatmatejourney.com (Pity donations are gratefully accepted.)
Good luck on your project!
[video]
I normally don’t get nervous for meetings, or dates, or any kind of new experience. I usually find a way to convince myself that nothing can go wrong. I try and think of a worst case scenario and set my expectations accordingly. That way, I don’t worry about screwing anything up and any positive outcome, even remembering to say please and thank you, gets tossed in the win column. I know I’m not setting the bar very high, but it works for me. Tonight was different, I knew I was about to get schooled…
It was exactly two weeks since I officially began the Great Maté Journey, my personal quest to learn anything and everything I could about yerba maté, a South American drink held by many to be a healthy, energy-boosting part of a well-balanced diet. The drink is widely consumed throughout South America as well as by a number of health conscious consumers all over the world. The drink is making an especially strong push with long-time coffee drinkers looking to replace the java habit with a healthier alternative.
Tonight I was meeting with Matéo Sluder, yerba maté connoisseur and Sales Rep for Guayaki Yerba Maté (his given name is really Matthew, but his love for maté inspired him to change his name to Matéo, that’s serious dedication). The goal of the night was to share some mate and have Mateo give me an overview of the traditional maté rituals. In South America, mate is normally drank from a hollowed out gourd with a mate-specific metallic straw called a bombilla. Loose maté leaves are put directly into the gourd, the gourd filled with hot water and the infused liquid sucked through the bombilla, which also acts as a strainer. Although I have been drinking maté for years, mostly with tea bags and other traditional tea kettles, it wasn’t until a month ago that I had my first gourd/bombilla experience. As I quickly found out and others later affirmed, it is a completely different level of mate drinking. However, just drinking out of the gourd was only half the experience. Traditional maté drinking is also an intimately social experience with a complete set of rituals around sharing the gourd with a group of people. Exactly the knowledge I hoped to glean from Matéo this evening.
Matéo arrived a few minutes later than I did and had brought along Adam, another mate veteran and Guayaki coworker. Mateo and Adam spent the first hour picking my brain, trying to figure out exactly what type of person would embark on a “Great Maté Journey.” Meanwhile, I spent the first hour absorbing all the mate knowledge I could handle. It wasn’t just the things they were saying, I was also taking mental notes of their actions, motions and subtleties around preparing the gourd.
One of the first things I noticed was their equipment. I thought I had finally joined the big leagues when I got my first gourd and bombilla, but compared to Adam and Matéo’s set-up, I had barely scratched the surface. Not only did Matéo and Adam each have elaborate gourds and bombillas, but each of them had a heavy-duty thermos that looked like they were preparing for mate drinking under any circumstance, even nuclear war. To carry the complete mate set, Mateo had a shoulder strapped satchel called a matera, which was about the size of my laptop bag. Each maté tool had its own fitted place inside the matera, which was really cool in an arms-dealing, professional-criminal kind of way. When Matéo busted out his mate equipment, people around the restaurant started to glance over as if a massive drug deal was going down. Just the right amount of tension and a lot of anticipation; it really felt like we were doing something illegal.
For our first gourd, Adam was the cebador, which is basically the yerba maté master of ceremonies. The cebador has a number of responsibilities throughout the maté session. The first job is to prepare the gourd as follows:
1) Fill the gourd about 2/3 full of maté.
2) Cover the top of the gourd with a hand, flip the gourd over, and give it a few tambourine-like shakes to move the largest fragments of maté to the bottom of the gourd.
3) Return the gourd to right side up, and shakes the maté over to create a ~45 degree mound of maté in the gourd. *If available, try adding a few drops of room temp water to hold the slanted mound of maté in place.
4) Insert the bombilla along the mound with the end of bombilla near the the bottom of the gourd.
After the gourd has been prepared and filled with water, the cebador is the first one to drink from it to make sure any loose particles of maté don’t end up in the back of the first drinkers throat. The cebador sucks the gourd dry, refills the gourd and then passes it to the next person. Adam passed me the gourd, making sure to explain the custom of having the bombilla pointing towards the receiver. I drank all the water from the gourd and thanked Adam as I passed it back to the cebador. Matéo was quick to mention that thanking (“Gracias”) the cebador when you pass back the gourd is an indication that you have had your fill of maté and are likely to be skipped on the next round. I made a mental note: be precise with your thank you.
The most surprising thing I learned from Matéo and Adam wasn’t about maté at all, it was about water temperature. Despite being prepared with a NASA-approved thermos, Adam immediately ordered a large glass of hot water when he got to the table. I spent the whole night trying not to look like an idiot by asking dumb questions, but I was curious about the water situation. They already had their thermoses and now had a glass of piping hot water that the waitress brought over. I noticed Adam mention to Matéo that the new glass of water was too hot, and when he issued a warning about the temperature before he passed me the gourd I knew that they took temperature very seriously.
“How hot do you want to water to be?” I had to ask, expecting a relative answer like warm, hot, very hot, just less than boiling, etc.
“168 degrees.” Adam responded sternly. I mentally converted that to my relativity scale and decided it was a little over half-way to boiling. Matéo explained the importance of using the right temperature to maximize the nutritional value of the maté. The nutritional science was a little over my head so I just took their word for it, 168 degrees it is.
After a few hours and 3 or 4 gourds, only Matéo and I remained. The conversation had covered everything from maté to South America, life-stories to shamanism. However, one thing Matéo said really stuck with me. He mentioned that yerba maté had a way of bringing interesting people into your life. After tonight, I had every reason to believe him.
“So this is it?” My dad said. “It’s a lot smaller than I imagined.”
I refilled the Maté gourd with water and handed it to my dad. He gave it a curious look but gave it a shot anyways.
“Whoa,” he said as his eyes lit up, “that’s pretty serious.”
I don’t think he expected the added effect of drinking maté from the gourd, but after a few refills I think he got used to it and really liked it. My dad has been drinking yerba maté for 7 years. He started drinking maté after reading about it in one of his favorite health magazines. The article praised maté as the healthy alternative to coffee for serious athletes. My dad had been a coffee drinker all his life, and kicking the java-habit wasn’t exactly high on his priority list, but he decided to give maté a shot. After only a few weeks of replacing coffee with maté, he was hooked. He hasn’t looked back since.
To be fair, my dad has always been into trying the latest and newest trend in healthy living. He’s always telling me about a new workout he’s doing or nutritional supplement I should read about. He’s got an entire library of natural health and wellness books. The garage has turned into a grave-yard of used workout equipment. He’s always been in great shape, but it’s interesting to monitor his healthy-lifestyle evolution. For me, my dad has been an incredible guinea pig for creating my own strategy for a long and healthy life. Essentially, my dad has climbed the mountain of healthy and brought back only the most useful advice for my exact genetics. Instead of testing out all these new ideas myself, I need only look at what stuck with my dad over the long-term or things that outlived the fad stage. Maté is one of those things. It passed the fad test with him, and now it’s an essential staple of his life.
Until a month ago, my entire maté experience consisted of only drinking maté tea bags. I had always known about the traditional gourd and bombilla, but had never ventured out of my way to experience it. It wasn’t until a friend gave me a gourd and bombilla that I realized what I was missing. It’s a totally different level of maté drinking. The first thing I could think about was sharing this new found experience with my dad. Not surprisingly, he really enjoyed it. So did I.
I just read this article about ADHD Drug Abuse. Doesn’t surprise me one bit. When I was in High School and College Ritalin and Adderall were all over the place. People would take adderall to study for a test, write a paper, read a book, whatever. I took it a few times, and had a bad experience. I was able to finish all my schoolwork in record time, but then I couldn’t sleep all night. Laying in my bed and not being able to sleep all night was an awful experience. I decided my sleep and my health was more important than slightly better grades.
Isn’t this crazy, though?? Kids (and adults) are now abusing drugs in order to get more schoolwork (and work) done. This is bizarre. Imagine telling someone in the 1960’s that the future of drugs would be designed to help you sudy more and do more homework. Impossible!
I apologize for the rant, but I think this is important. More specifically, I think Maté could be a healthy alternative for the people looking to get more energy and focus.