Angela Bryant: 0:08

Welcome, I'm Angela Bryant and you're listening to The Angel Rated Show, where we have inspiring conversations with the people behind the products and services most often used by online business owners. On the show, you'll hear how their personal beliefs and values have influenced their businesses. If you're an online entrepreneur who wants to know about the integrity and impact of the businesses you're buying from, then this is the show for you. Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Angel Rated Show. I'm Angela Bryant. And with me today I have the ever sparkly Sarika, so Sarika is the founder of Sarika group, helping people brighten their faces and spirits through sake and face yoga. So before she became a Sake, Sake Yogi, Sarika worked for the United Nations, in Asia and Africa, on women's empowerment and sustainable urban policy. And before that she did, she did her Master's of Science at LSE, which London School of Economics, and keeping that same focus on gender and sustainability. So she now shares her love of sake and face yoga, with a special attention on small scale sustainable breweries and women brewers. And she really enjoys face yoga. And I'm sure we're going to talk about that a lot. And as we go through, but to start with, tell us your story, tell us a bit about how you came to be doing what you're doing now.

Sarika: 1:30

First of all, thank you for having me. Thank you for the introduction. You introduced me. So that's what I do. Yeah, basically, I help people brighten their faces and spirits through sake and face yoga.

Angela Bryant: 1:45

So how did you get into that?

Sarika: 1:47

Well, it's actually really simple. It's just because I really love Well, I discovered that I really love sake and face yoga. So, you know, they're both like my most favorite things. And I'd never thought of it. I mean, I never thought of that as a business, of course, but somehow it just organically evolved. And I'm teaching both right now.

Angela Bryant: 2:14

So for anyone not watching this video, anyone listening, explain your sort of cultural background and what what connection you have sake.

Sarika: 2:22

Yeah, well, first of all, I'm Japanese. And while sake is basically our national drink, but the thing is, I never actually like sake in fact, I always felt like it's disgusting. And I never really understood what is so you know, fascinating about sake, like until about 10 years ago. And just by chance, because kind of in Japan sake. I mean, it's changing now, in those times, like, in my, when I was young sake is like, my grandfather's drink. You know, it's like a non stylish drink. I was never really interested in. And, you know, I would always drink sake at my grand parents place, and it tasted pretty bad. So I was never interested. But just one day, just like complete chance, I had this most amazing drink. And it turned out to be sake and ever since somehow, just organically. I started learning more about sake, and I was so blown away that sake was supposed to taste so delicious, like this. So that's really how I started. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't like I had a business strategy in place or anything it just that I was just blown away How delicious sake is. And then I learned little by little that, actually, that the sake industry in Japan is in a major crisis, that it's actually no because of different reasons. The domestic consumption is just going down. And just in the last, let's say, 50 years, it's gone down like 1/3 of the consumption, even though it's a national drink. So yeah, I thought that's a tragedy, it's such a delicious, you know, sake is, of course, like is a drink, but it's To me, it's like the art. It's really drinkable art. So have you had sake Angela?

Angela Bryant: 4:31

Not for a long, long time, but I have tried it. So just to be clear, it's a fermented rice wine. Is that a good description?

Sarika: 4:40

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a Yeah, exactly. It is it is the same category as beer and wine. It's not distilled like vodka. Because a lot of people think it's like, oh, it must be distilled and 40%, but it's actually just a tiny bit above wine. Like that's a 16 percent or so? Yeah. So exactly like you said, you know it.

Angela Bryant: 5:04

So you you obviously have become passionate about it and really want to promote it. And so is that that's obviously the sort of the drive behind the business that you've created your Sarika group is to do that and help do that education.

Sarika: 5:19

Absolutely. Because I want to, of course, I want to continue drinking my delicious sake. That's an underlying thing as well. But really, I was so surprised after studying about sake that actually so many, even Japanese people don't know much about it. And they don't value the sake and that was a little bit shocking. So yeah, so that's for sure. I would love to share how delicious and beautiful sake is to Japanese woman. And of course, people outside of Japan too. So that's one driver. But now knowing that the sake industry, it's like, every month, there's a sake brewery going bankrupt. And, you know, these breweries have been going on for centuries. And so I know putting all of this together. Yes, I love drinking sake, I would love to share how delicious it is to my fellow Japanese women. Because Japanese woman now is changing. But you know, when I was younger, of couse people would gravitate towards wine, champagne, which is great. Of course, that's delicious, too. But we tend to forget that we have such a beautiful craft right at home. So that's kind of one driver. And then others. Of course, if we have more consumption, these sake breweries, you know, sake has been going on for 2000 years. So it's such a shame if it's going to collapse like this. So yeah, definitely want to see, and we can do something about the sake industry. So it's like many reasons. But those are the main three.

Angela Bryant: 7:02

It feels like it needs that revolution. I think we've had something similar in the UK around gin over the last decade, where lots of new producers have appeared. And it's become the in thing and lots of new breweries. So it feels like sake needs to have that in Japan.

Sarika: 7:19

Absolutely. The only problem though, in the industry is that there are no, under the sake law or under Japanese law. You can't open new breweries anymore. Yes. So like, yes, it's there's a huge I mean, there's so many regulations concerning sake in Japan. And home brewing is also banned. And there are many things that are banned that are completely allowed everywhere else in the world. So yeah,

Angela Bryant: 7:48

So once these breweries close down, that's the end.

Sarika: 7:51

That's the end. There are exceptions, if you can open a brewery, if it's only for export, for example, but not in a normal sense. Yeah. That's the regulations, but we need to find ways to revive.

Angela Bryant: 8:07

So what do you want to be known for? What do you want your business to? legacy? Do you want to create with what you're doing?

Sarika: 8:14

Yeah, well, legacy is quite grand. But um, well, my vision, of course, is that the sake in the popularity? I mean, there's, there is actually I'm confident that there is actually a mini mini revival happening already compared to let's say, 10 years ago, which is great. And, yeah, so in terms of what I hope will happen, um, well, hopefully that, you know, more, more people like especially even in within Japan, because at the end of the day, domestic consumption is the majority of sake. And actually export sake export is growing like tripling quadrupling, but it's the domestic consumption that is really declining. So you will be great is actually definitely people would wake up and realize that we have such a delicious, you know, craft right at home, and we'll start appreciating more sake in Japan itself, as well.

Angela Bryant: 9:15

And tell us more about the you talked about sort of gender and sustainability. What's the how's it vary in terms of male versus female makers? And do you use specifically support female makers? How does that fit into your business?

Sarika: 9:28

Well, first of all, as you can you imagine, the sake industry is rather heavily male dominated. The reason being that actually women were not even allowed inside the brewery for centuries, because of many reasons, like religious and practical reasons, you know, lots of superstitions about how a woman's menstrual cycle may interfere with the ferment rice fermentation and, of course, other practical reasons, but it's all heavy work. So So this kind of background means that only now there are finally woman brewers coming into the scene. And even though the original sake brewers were actually woman, like back in third century, yes, the temple priestess were brewing sake, that was really the secret origin of sake. But, you know, somehow it became so commercialized. And it's truly it became kind of at one point how the Japanese government see that as a tax, a great tax revenue, so a lot of regulations on the sake industry and how to scale it. So through that kind of direction, kind of women were banned for a while. And now, we finally have great women brewers. But you know, out of the whole right now, there's about 1200 breweries. And if you can guess how many women brewers that there are? There's each brewery has one master Brewer out of 1200.

Angela Bryant: 11:05

So I'm guessing it's a fairly small number is it? Is it 100 200?

Sarika: 11:11

You're very optimistic. So it's about well, there are varying statistics, because actually, they're they're not really officially documented, but it's about roughly 30 to 50. Women because they're different hierarchies. Within the brewery, you can have women presidents or you can have women brewers, but those are separate rules. But if you think a woman as a very key part of the brewery, it's really miniscule number, if you think of 1200. And there's about 30 to 50, who are really in charge, like the sake that I have right here is a woman owned brewery, for example. But this is really rare. So So yes, of course, in my workshop and my consultancy, I always try to feature the e sake but the problem. Of cou se, that's my intention. But the problem is that there are lso practical reasons that t ese women who brew sake are n t available, because most of the e breweries, these sma l breweries, that women a e playing a key role are fami y owned, really tiny brewerie, and they don't have marketi g budget to go overseas. o obtaining this outside Japan, I mean, actually, inside Jap n even is quite difficult. B t yeah, so that definitely, so I always try to hide like, the e women who are doing real y amazing things. And I do have a project called woman in sake project as well.

Angela Bryant: 12:43

So tell us about that. Is that specifically on that in that area?

Sarika: 12:47

Exactly? Well, basically, we don't know enough about these. I mean, well, first of all, just to give you a context, you know, Japan is a so called developed country, but in terms of gender, gender equality, and ranking, we are talking like, we're like the bottom 100. Well, like last, you know, every year there's a gender. What is it called a gender kind of index, you know, that's issued by a lot of places, issue it the World Economic Forum, etc. So I think the last 2021, Japan was like 121 out of 156 countries. So we're like the bottom. Definitely, in terms of gender, really, really low. And it's, in terms of the background like, like education and health for women is alright. But we're talking about economic participation and political participation. It's like, very pathetic. So that's kind of the background of how it is. And then if you take the sake industry within, that kind of overall picture, it is definitely a more fair to say it's pretty male dominated. So yeah, to give you a context, so yeah, within that, so I'm trying to find these great women who are doing amazing things in the brewery who may not be really well known. And so yeah, I'm actually interviewing them just like how you're interviewing these women entrepreneurs, and I have a project a little kind of passion project series. That's not income generating, but I just do it because I have fun and I love it.

Angela Bryant: 14:35

Fantastic, I love the sound of it. And I think that I've seen I think I've seen one of those and it's all in Japanese, but with subtitles.

Sarika: 14:44

I found actually some foreign or non Japanese sake people too you know, so I've got like subtitles, yeah.

Angela Bryant: 14:55

I just love I love your energy and I love your passion for this because it's just such a unique and sort of targeted focus. It's Yeah, it makes such a good business idea. I think. So, tell us, I mean, I think you you strike me as a person who's always learning new stuff. So how do you keep How do you keep learning? How do you keep keeping up to date with what's going on in all these areas?

Sarika: 15:19

Okay, well, the world right now with COVID. There's so many learning opportunities, right? That was never actually existing before if you were far away from Japan, so yeah, I mean, they're brewery tours, and all kinds of brewery talks and all these. And of course, you are also doing a lot of interesting things and participating in your project, like the coworking crowd, there's so many learning opportunities that I never, you know, thought about before. COVID. Before?

Angela Bryant: 15:54

Yeah, so you can do so many more things online that you couldn't do previously

Sarika: 15:58

I never knew about this online world at all? Until

Angela Bryant: 16:02

and now you're part of it.

Sarika: 16:05

I love it, actually.

Angela Bryant: 16:07

So tell me a bit more about your sort of personal worldview, or how you live your life, what's important to you, what are your beliefs?

Sarika: 16:17

I guess that would be the same for any human being, I mean, very fundamental beliefs about. So I'm really love. And yeah. I mean, it's really kind of hard to separate my business and myself in some way. Because I'm, what I love is my business. So it's really hard to separate these, but of course, I believe in, especially gender equality, and, yeah, equity. So that's kind of my long life theme, if you could say so because, I mean, I never even knew the word gender. But like, since maybe when I was four or so I've already had this question mark, in my mind, you know, with my grandparents, whenever they did something, they would say, Oh, sorry, you're a girl. That's you shouldn't say that. Or you shouldn't be wearing that color. So if it's already been kind of my theme for, you know, decades four decades. That's Yeah, that's an ongoing thing. And that's in the UN. I was working on gender issues. And I think once you put the gender sunglasses on, you can never take it off. It's, you're always looking at it through a gender perspective. So yeah.

Angela Bryant: 17:37

Yeah, definitely. I think, yeah, as you said, You've grown up in a culture where that's it's probably even

Sarika: 17:40

I think I was just always like this. I don't know. more stark differences and some of the things that I'm used to in the UK, and that other people will be used to in the US and other places. So yeah, really interesting to grow up in that environment, and then go on and work in that area. I was going to ask some of my sort of more lighter questions. One of the questions that I've All I think about is about like, what makes I think my mom is even more than smiley to me, you laugh the most often, but you laugh every few seconds, you're like you just are permanently happy laughing person. So is that? Have you always been like that? I'm just really, I love your I mean, your energy and your bubblyness is? eah, always just spills over So does that come from some here? Or is that just a love of life?

Angela Bryant: 18:38

It's lovely. I love it. And I love speaking to you. And yeah, seeing you online because that just having that sort of level of positive energy is is lovely. So let's talk about something else, then let's talk about face yoga. Because this is the other thing you bring into your business. So where did you get into that? And how does that fit?

Sarika: 18:57

Again It was these two things are complete accidents. I mean, it was never my intention to make it a business, let alone face yoga. When I when I tell my former UN colleagues that I'm teaching face yoga they go what, what happened. Face yoga, is basically a face exercise, and you know, and unexpectedly I got into it so much. Because it looks like a joke really, like the poses are like, but it actually has such a profound effect internally. Yeah, I know, it sounds really implausible when I tell you this, but you know, our facial expressions and our mind, I mean, how we feel in our emotions are actually so connected. That's why when a lot of the times we carry stress on our faces and when you actually let go of the facial stress by doing face yoga, you actually You let go even your stress in your mind. So I really, really started loving it so much, but I never thought of teaching it. But it was just people kept asking me, can you show us these poses and just kind of again, organically grew? So it was never my intention. But yes, it's part of the Sarika group, I have two pillars. One is face yoga, and one is sake.

Angela Bryant: 20:24

Can you give us? Is there a simple descriptive exercise that you could give us or something really simple to try?

Sarika: 20:33

Oh, yeah, there are so many options. There's over 70 poses, but so okay, maybe I'll ask you like, what, what kind of pose Would you like to know?

Angela Bryant: 20:44

okay, so I keep all my tension in my, a lot of tension in my jaw right under my ears here, which is hard. If you're listening, that might be quite hard, I'm pointing but right at the back of my jaw. So what's a good thing we're releasing in there.

Sarika: 20:57

Okay, so there's one called the detox pose, which is kind of uses a great pose for releasing overall tension, not a specific area. But it will definitely release this tension here. And it's a great post, because you don't need much of alignment, some causes you need, like alignment to make sure you're doing it correctly. But this one is super easy, you can't go wrong. So I'll show you and we can do it together.

Angela Bryant: 21:25

You have to describe it as well describe what you're doing.

Sarika: 21:30

I hope not to shock you. So it goes like this, I'm breathing in through my nose. And yeah, so what I did is actually I expelled everything out of my system. And in face yoga, there's a lot of mind and the face muscle connection. So you want to be visualizing what you're doing when you're, when you're inhaling, you're visualizing, you're taking in all the great things like all of the positive things from the universe. And when you're exhaling, in this case, through your mouth, you're visualizing that your stress your worries, and you said you have tension here, all that tension is expelling out of your system. But when you do this, you're going to use your tongue. And your you will actually feel that your tongue in your inner muscle, you know, organs are actually really connected. And you will feel even your core engaged when you do this. So yeah, we'll do it together.

Angela Bryant: 22:42

Okay, let's give it a go.

Sarika: 22:44

So the shoulders are relaxed. And you can, if there's any residual tension, you can kind of tap your forehead a bit. Yep. And yet, there's no point doing face yoga when you're feeling tense, we want to make sure because you know, our posture and our emotions, just like the facial expressions are so connected. So if we're hunched back, we feel sad. And if we're heart space is open, we actually feel open. So you're, you want that heart space open. And now you're going to inhale through your nose, taking in all the good things, and then you're going to exhale through your mouth. And really, really stick your tongue out like, you really mean it even more. Do you feel that your core engaged when you? Yes. So you really want to exhale everything out? Because we actually we don't tend to exhale everything when we're breathing normally, sometimes we're focusing on inhaling, but sometimes, you know, we forget to exhale completely. So one, exhale everything out. And this is a great one for tension even hangovers. Yeah, so that's called the detox pose.

Angela Bryant: 24:12

Thank you. That was brilliant. I'm gonna have to try that more when I'm not on video. Well, I'll do a few more of those later on. So before we start wrapping up, just tell us a bit about your I mean just, it sounds like you've lived all over the world. you've traveled everywhere. You've been to so many different places. But tell us about some of your favorite places to have lived and worked.

Sarika: 24:35

You know, I really enjoyed everywhere I've been, but especially well. No favorites. I mean, with with the UN. I was working in Nairobi, Kenya and Bangkok, Thailand and Vietnam. So those are really, I really feel so close to especially even now Kenya was so long time ago, but whenever sometimes I'm awake at 3am thinking about, like the animals and everything. Yeah, but right now I'm in Poland, I opened my business in Poland with Google Translate. nearly a year ago. So every place has had it's really charming. It's been really interesting.

Angela Bryant: 25:24

Fantastic. So yeah, I mean, you mentioned your business, tell us where people can find you and what you've got that you're offering currently in your business.

Sarika: 25:34

So I guess the easiest would be my website, which is sarikagroup.org. Instagram, is sarika.sake Those are two places, that's easy to find me.

Angela Bryant: 25:52

Fantastic. And we will put those links to those in the show notes. So you've got workshops, on face yoga. You've got workshops on sake various different things, courses that you're creating.

Sarika: 26:04

Yeah. all at the same time. I really, yeah, definitely everything. But, you know, they're all my babies. I don't want to drop any of this. So yes, I'm actually Well, I'm, I'm an ambassador for a dokudoku, which is the origins of sake for the sake industry. So we have lots of things happening for the buduku day coming up, and I will do a workshop for that as well. And yes, for face yoga, I have a mini training coming up for women entrepreneurs, and more later in the year. This is the course for face yoga for drinkers or wine lovers. That's coming up.

Angela Bryant: 26:53

It sounds like such a good combination. Yeah, I like the idea of doing drinking the sake, and then doing the face yoga the next day to take away the effects on your face. Sounds like a great way of doing it. Well, thank you ever so much for joining us Sarika. I have loved talking to you, as I always do. And yeah, thank you for being here.

Sarika: 27:13

Thank you Angela. Really, thank you for having me. I really love what you're doing. I mean, I've really admired two of the things you're doing the Angel Rated and the coworking crowd. I really, really appreciate that.

Angela Bryant: 27:27

Thank you. So kind of you so kind. So well. There we go. That's the end of this episode. If you want to read the show notes and get any of the links to Sarika you can go to Angel rated.com forward slash podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, please do share it with your friends and subscribe to the show and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. The Angel Rated Show is brought to you by Angel Rated the independent directory and review site for all the products courses and services used by online business owners. It's the best place to find the perfect product for the next stage of your business or personal growth. Learn more and list your business free of charge at Angel rated.com