Episode 524: From One Pallet of Coffee Beans to Multiple Truck Loads a Month with Luke Schneider ...

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

I'm talking with Luke Snyder and Jason Patrick and we're having a lot of fun being real about what's involved in starting a business. I'm curious, Luke, on a scale of numbers, you know, business boils down to the numbers. And so when you started, what were your numbers? How much coffee were you shipping? You know, by the, how do you measure by the £5 pound, you know, certain size bags and things like that? Were you doing it person to person? Were you doing it online? And how much were you dealing, moving in beginning and compared to where you are now?

All in kilos. It's like Coke.

It went from 800, put it in perspective of green coffee. It went from ordering a pallet of coffee at a time, carrying that pallet up some steps into the strip mall that we were at now to sending truckloads and, and buying multiple containers a month of coffee and now, now working on supply chain and support, sourcing directly from the farms and exporting and importing ourselves and, and doing all that. So it's gone from, you know, buying, you know, bags at a time to now containers at a time and talk.

About that, bags to containers. Because you, when you buy, you're buying raw coffee, is that right? And then you're roasting it and then you're, you know, talk about that.

So coffee is a commodity. It's actually the, the second largest traded commodity in the world behind crude oil. And, and just like any commodity, you have to learn, you have to understand the, the market, what impacts it, you know, what, what's the driver of how it's being impacted. And coffee's been crazy lately, especially if you watch the, the coffee market just like a lot of other markets right now. So it's, you know, baking smart, trying to make as, as smart of educated and educated decisions as you can when it comes to purchasing, trying to save costs. But also it's, it's very important to us, especially now as, as we're growing more and more volume, we want to make sure what's going on at origin as well. So we want to, that we start establishing relationships with the farms, making sure that they're being paid properly. So if we can cut out any middleman in the process, we can ensure that, you know, the farmers are being paid what, what they should be. And if I'm going to give that money to anybody. I'd rather give it to the farmers.

And so how did you find, how did you figure out, you know, someone's by college buy coffee. You can't go down and get a pallet of it at your grocery store, you know, especially raw. So how did you start unraveling all of that stuff? Did your, your wife, because she was a barista, did she have contacts or did she know, you know, where you start off as a little bit of an insider?

We actually googled buying green beans. Our first palate was an entire thing of regular green beans.

So, you know.

How did they roast up, by the way? Yeah, it wasn't good.

It was just, just set, just immersing yourself into the, into the culture, you know, and, and in coffee. And I would say coffee has its own culture too. And you know, and we've been, there's a lot of trends that go on in coffee. We've, we've, we keep an eye on those trends, but we also, we actually prefer making our own trends. So we, we do what makes sense for us, which is why we created our spirit infused coffee. We have a unique proprietary coffee that is our spirit infused coffee. And we, we, when we were, when we got into coffee, there was a lot of what you would consider like the, what people call the third wave of coffee and a lot of these like trendy coffee shops. Well, we could have easily just tried to be one of those trendy coffee shops. We, we, we didn't want to do that. It made sense for us to start online. You know, being a firefighter working 24 hours and 48 off, I knew I couldn't staff a cafe, but I knew I could ship orders on my day off and I can do customer service and that kind of thing. So we did that because that's what made sense for, for us. We, we, we didn't want to be like every other coffee company. We wanted to build our own brand and, and have a mission behind it and go after that, you know, and, and be true to who we are and true to our mission. So we've, everything we've done in the, in, in this company has been because it made sense for us. It's not just because that's what other people were doing.

You know, so you were, in the beginning, you're shipping the coffee yourself, you're, you know, you're getting the orders online and, and how did you get your word out to start off that, that you were in business and people could find you and this was, how did you let people know initially this was.

A thing, initially it was friends and family, you know, people, word of mouth, that kind of thing, doing some small events, expos. Some small expos and stuff like that. And then when I met Jason, we were able to really take it to the next level with, with him doing the social media content and driving awareness online. Because we started as an online company so it's really key to, to build that community on social media, which helps your online search organically and your SEO and all that stuff. So it's, it's all tied together. So it's really helped. Initially I would say got some, got some momentum going just from friends and family, but with, with Jason's stuff that he's doing and then even doing, you know, working, starting to build a team, doing that stuff and building, making content and, and social media and stuff, we've been able to really take it to the next level.

So Jason, what were the first things that jumped in your mind that what you could take to market this thing and what were the first things you did once you got involved? Let's say this, that we're successful. That was successful. Yeah, yeah.

Again, we wanted, we know that there's other coffee brands out there, so we wanted to separate ourselves. And how do we do that? We do that through the things that we know, work, humor, humor and then letting people know that it is a high quality coffee. So whenever we would create a video, we tried to kind of have to have those paramount things to really think about. How do we describe the coffee, how do we take, tell people that it is great tasting, high quality coffee. And we do that through fun descriptors, so on and so forth. And then also most recently we started doing some fun videos about the roasting process. And again, a lot of the stuff that we're doing is exploding outside of what would be within the normal box of, you know, this is great coffee, it tastes good, sip, so on and so forth. So we, we really wanted to focus on how to draw people to our brand because again, most people know you have to see a product seven times before you're going to make the purchase. So how do we do that? We can do it through advertising, through, you know, search engine optimizations and then obviously through the social media. But we know that firefighter humor, EMS humor, the people that were originally trying to connect with, we know how to make those types of videos. So we, we made those videos. And then other thing is that we realize is that it's not just firefighters that want to buy our coffee. It's people that support firefighters. So we had to branch outside of that as well. So, yeah, it's been a fun journey.

Now you were on the receiving end, Luke, and how quick did you notice a spike in sales after you got Jason involved and the social media presence started to be felt? How quick did that turn into sales for you?

It's been, it's. I feel like since the beginning, it's been a quick climb. I mean, we've gone from instantly, huh? Yeah, yeah. So I'd say that from the very beginning, we've just been an onward and upward and that's, that's what's made this really exciting. It's really been a roller coaster, but a fun one.

Yeah. And what would the next step? I mean, you know, what I see is like, you had an initial starter thing, a family and friends and local. Then you bring in Jason. Was Jason. Were you up there in Illinois at that time or were you already down in Florida?

I was.

I was in Florida. He contacted me, said, come on up. And I went up.

I'm sure when you got in, you let everybody else around, you know, so that was going to be a bunch of business and then I'm sure. So that had to be a surge, but, you know, because you're tapping into your natural market and influence and then I'm sure there was a surge of your presence on social media and all of a sudden you're starting to get out there and that you've run that for a long way. You're up to. How much did you say, Luke? You're. Maybe you don't want to give these numbers out, but you're sales wise.

Yeah, we should hit about, about, about 10 million this year is what we're looking at.

10 million. And. And now for you to go now to 100 million. I'm. I, you know, you have to stay away from me. Okay. Because I don't know why I'm like this. I don't need money. I take. I know I never needed to start this podcast.

Larry, we. Larry, we need money.

So I just, I just, I just have ideas. I just have ideas and I wind up tormenting myself. Well, all these things that would be fun to do. Let's do that. And so, you know, so when I think about, when I'm talking with. And this is one reason why I'm a coach of million dollar earners, because I talked to them like this, you know, when they were little, you know, it's just like, you know, you Got the consistency, you're up to a certain level. But it's like, what can we do now to explode out of the 10 million into 25, 50, 100 million and go, you know, open up, have those. You don't want to waste a lot of time on that, but you want to be at least opening the door mentally for the possibility of that. Are there role. You know, one of the best things is have role models, you know, people that have gone before you are. Are there things you've learned from people that have gone before you or you guys charting your own path?

No, no, we're smart about that. We understand that. We're not, you know, again, we're just, we're two firefighters and a veteran, you know, coming together to try to grow a brand. What we've understood is diversification. You know, social media is great for brand awareness and then understanding ads and paid ads and search engine optimization and understanding to getting things in front of people is great as well. But those two things aren't going to take you to the levels that we want to go to. So E commerce was great, but we understood that we needed to become an Omni Channel. We need to be able to move into retail as well. And then retail is great, but what's the next diversification beyond that? That we can get people that want to drink coffee immediately, they want to have a cold beverage in their hand when they walk through the, through the, to the convenience store. So being able to hit every single one of those. And then we've also moved into creating other revenue streams within the business that not only give us additional revenue streams, but also complement the additional things on social media as well. So we know if you want to sell coffee, you can sell coffee, that's great. But we want to sell coffee, entertain and be able to make as much money and support people through our charitable foundation as well.

Yeah, and that allows you also to keep your employees, you know, because there's job places for them to continue to move up rather than have be the people who stall out and go stale on growth. You know, one thing I'm going to tell you guys, don't forget this. Grow or die. Yeah, don't ever forget that. Because death, when you slow down, you started to die. And if you're not watching those numbers, it's not that you're money hungry and this, that and the other. And you know, you're just sick with greed. You know, it's that if you don't grow, you got to go stale, you know, and if you don't run. You rust. And so what when you only have to grow a little bit, you only have to. But you have to keep that pedal on the growth or things start to stall. And that's when decay. And it comes in by degrees, little by little, and then, boom. You know, it's just hard to turn it around. It's easier to keep the momentum going than to let the train stop or slow down. You never, you know, when it slows down, it's going to take that much more effort to get it up to full speed again. And it's. It's just, you know, people say about winning, you know, it's like, I was not a great athlete in high school, but I learned one thing. Winning is better than losing. You know, you don't. You don't have to be a Hall of Famer to understand that winning is better than losing. And also, it doesn't matter how much winning you've done. That's why Tom Brady's, you know, he's not just playing this year. He's going to be playing for a Super bowl this year. Yeah, yeah, he knows what he wants to be playing in February. And so, you know, they say, well, he's not as. He's not at training camp. And they say, no, he's not going to be a training camp. He's got a long season, folks. You know, he doesn't need to be there in August, you know, yeah, he's going to be there in the Super Bowl. He's not going to wash out in December and not make the playoffs and all of that stuff. So the thing is that winning is so much fun. And so I encourage you guys to keep your eye on the ball and keep moving forward, because the way I look at it, you started something really big. And the other way I'd look at it is if other people have done it, you can, too. And probably you should do it bigger because you're coming on behind with, first of all, new technology, new advantages, and you're following in their pattern. They've opened the door. They've shown you ways. They've made mistakes, and if you take the time to learn from that and make friends with those guys. You know, one thing with Sam Walton, I mean, he was in every retail store, major retail operation, picking the brain, going in and meeting the president and vice president and sharing ideas. You know, we ran these sales. This worked for us down in Florida. You know, this didn't work for us out on the West Coast. And he would even go into Europe and Those, you know, those stores over there, you know, pick up ideas there. He was constantly, you know, he didn't just learn from his own successes and failures and his own stores, but he learned from the other guys out there. So I would encourage you be proactive on that and because, you know, we're only limited by our ideas. And so once you got the idea, you could use it the rest of your life. Great ideas, don't care who use them, you know, but first you got to get them. That's what we do on this podcast, is expose people to. They don't even know what they're getting when they get on. The appreciate you guys getting on and I'm going to give you a word, a chance to say a final word, each of you to up and coming entrepreneurs and whatever you want to pass on to them. Luke, you want to go first? Sure.

I'd say don't. Don't let fear hold you back. You know, don't let your fear hold you back. If you have a vision, you build a team. You know, build the team. Use, use your team. You know, share the, share the vision, share the victories, share the rewards and go for it. Work hard. You know, sometimes you just don't figure it out until you actually start doing it. So don't let anything hold you back, especially not fear.

Yeah, that's a great point. A lot of this stuff you're never gonna figure out until you get in the fight, you know, and as if you, as long as you know how to get it started and a general idea of how it's gonna go, you know, the rest you can just figure out in, in, in the middle of it and you won't figure it out any other way. A lot of these things you just can't figure out that way. So. But when you've got it, you can apply that lesson the rest of your life. That's why you, you know, with. That's one thing that you guys can look forward to in the future is all of these lessons that you've accumulated up to this point, those are available to you to apply when situations come up the rest of your life. And that's going to allow you to move through the obstacles quicker, faster, better, you know, and so you put yourself in an enviable position. I compliments to you for how far you've come. Jason, you want to say, add something as a final word? No.

I loved what Luke said. And again, just anyone that's getting into the business, anyone starting up anything, growth is not linear. It is not Embrace the suck. The failures are about to come at some point in time to learn from those failures. Keep moving forward. And honestly, it's some of the greatest moments that you'll have in your life are the moments where you realize crap that wasn't the right thing to do and you're able to go from there and diversify your team. Man, if you're surrounded by a bunch of people that think, act and do just like you, you're probably not going.

To go very far.

You want to be able to have people that share the same morals, the same thought processes, but have a little bit different tools to bring to the fight. And then you have the most successful team or company around.

Great, great words, great wisdom. Thank you guys. Look forward to hearing many more great things from you in the future and looking forward to checking back with you down the road and hearing about some of those adventures. Fair enough.

Thank you, Larry.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Larry.

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