One Man's Journey in The Coffee Industry and Life

Oh come on will ya!!!! I don't believe that anyone actually fell for that self possessed shit!!!! You obviously don't know me and that really sucks!! That is what is wrong with the internet and texting and every other non-contact sport we have about reading other people's shit!! You never know how to take it, because it is trying to negotiate and equate not a real actual voice and a real actual person!!! It is George Orwell's 1984, and big brother might be watching but you ain't!!! That is too f'ing bad, but that is who we have become, acceptance is the first rule of realizing some behavior is wrong and we aren't even close to being there. So anyway.............. Let's talk about the journey, let's talk about what motivates certain people and makes other's tune out! The difference between the two, has nothing to do with culture, it has nothing to do with money, it has nothing to do with where you came from, it begins with dreams. I have found

You know sometimes you just have to uncle!! Sometimes you do, and for an irish catholic son of a bitch from a Mattapan project, that is a hard thing to swallow. I thought this would be an uplifting interesting idea in theory. But it has unfortunately turned into a wet rag as they say!!! Hanging on the sink and begging to be cleaned off all the germs and crap that a day of a rag could possibly gather just by hanging there. Well, I think..... I am saying uncle, to this blog. I just looked and 2 people viewed it today!! I think that is a stunning declaration to just stop! No one is interested in the story, and that's fine!! Have a story to write and have no one read it, see how you feel? Well, that's not right is it? I was brought up better than that. Thanks to the people who did read it, and good luck with all your futures. I'll see you one way or the other....... of course you could also jump off and read my other blog about music!!! It's called, MusicWillSetYouFree.blog

You know, I have been thinking carefully about what business in the U.S. has become. I am rather a historian, and I am centered on brands! I guess brand recognition is simply what brought us into the 20th and 21st century! But I sometimes worry about this. I say that brands may not matter as much as they used to, in fact there is unequivocal data that says, NO they don't. I think this is complete crap and a lack of the country we live in to be vigilant and loyal and all those things our ancestors and still recently passed generations held so close to their vest! I simply think, that is what made America great over the last oh say, 175 years. Now we are not Europe and we are certainly not China or well versed in the eastern culture. So forget about that!! I think we have lost our way. I have a train of thought and a thesis, bear with me. American brands, are blankets, they are fluff in your hair, they are the southern seabreeze that rattles your screens at night! Nothing is made he

Hey I have to say, this is a stretch for me, being from Boston and all. But Congratulations to the Chicago Blackhawks tonight on winning the Stanley cup!! I mean how good can it it get? Two teams from the original six on national television, and what a great game! Boston is a hockey town!! So isn't Chicago, I have been there quite often and kudos to you, you were the better team and you deserved to win, I know it sucks for us but reality is in the proof and the proof was you beat us fair and square!! So, that does not mean you lose your competitive edge, that does not mean the team we had couldn't achieve the ultimate goal. That means you go back to the drawing board and you analyze why it happened. You see there are certain companies, sports teams, operations that you want to lift the best practices out of and get to understand the intricacies that make them great and then tweak them to be better. That is life and that is business. If you aren't changing for the good of m

Yeah that's right, isn't it? Well not really, the factory was so busy and the sales were coming in. We went from $5.6 million to $24 million in a hurry. No capital involved, which made me think, hmmm, maybe we are really not very proficient. But I would come back off the road and there would be 10 more employees on the production floor, and then I would go back out and they'd be 15! What is going on, we had the capacity, we had the resources, what we didn't have was someone that wanted to invest in the future. AAAAARGH. You know what that feels like for a 35 year old, with his whole life ahead of him? Death. But hey I got it and you can only pick so many fights. So, what I did was try to reduce costs everywhere else. I looked at insurance, health insurance, any out sourcing we did to cut the crap out of all these costs we were incurring. Then I found it the magic bullet, let's invest in futures and options!! Calls, Puts, market positioning let's go! So that'

OK So you may be thinking this a blog about this or that. Well it is, it is a blog about it ALL!! Life, career, family, success, failure, family, creativity, frustration, liberation etc. etc....... So right now in 2013, it is very introspective year for me. But I started to think about business in America, and started checking statistics and they are disturbing! If you don't think so, please try and refute these facts, I know this is not a story this is kind of a math class but, HEY, there are a lot of right brain people out there. I believe there are a lot of left brain people, who would get this more, but that is just based on my years of experience in owning a successful business. Before I get started, this is a perfect segway from my last post about Getty, Vanderbilt and Ford!!! Let's just survey the land of corporate America these days! I am interested to see what your thoughts will be based on hard line statistics, about how we run our businesses in the 21st Century. H

I think that common sense is THE biggest thing you can have in regard to running a successful business! I think Webster's should ban common sense and re-label it uncommon sense, because it is so rare! Really think about it, most mistakes happen in this world because people don't display, COMMON sense! It is a long underrated gift, that most people don't possess. That is the reason I got ahead, it was simple for me, and I am not blowing my horn, believe me. It was just simply, what works in the most efficient manner and what doesn't work is the wrong way. Now you can obviously make that way better, but the way is the way, let's put it that way, huh? You can talk all you want about going to business school and learning kaizen techniques and six sigma black belt blah, blah, blah or go one further and talk about lean methodologies????? Really, have you read up on this shit? Is someone reinventing the wheel here? NOOOOOOOOO! They are not! Go read J.Paul Getty's biogr

So who was it that says everyone is now a coffee expert? Can somebody please fill me in on this crap? I have spent over half my life in the coffee industry and it seems everyone has a new light on coffee!!! Get a grip people!! ORGANIC??? Do you really want to go there!!! Just an FYI guys, 99% of the coffee in the world is grown by third world countries who can barely pay the people to pick the cherries. Let me ask you this? Do you really think they can afford chemicals and whatever else it takes to do anything? Let me also ask the public this? Has anyone come up with a SUPER coffee tree that can double the output of the original? Well the answer is a resounding NO!!!! And you know why? There is no technology!! You know why? Because the MEGA roasters in the COUNTRY I call home don't care. They let these farmers and their workers live in virtual poverty and for what? Don't even get me started on the the fair trade crap!!! That is a complete joke. Anyway, you would think that ins

So everything was really good. The job was going great. our work schedules were tough, but we were young and just pushed through. One night I am getting out of the car at the house with my wife and kids , who were 9 and 3 at the time, at 8:30 at night. Always a long day and I stepped on a CD case in the driveway. My heart sunk. I sadid to Susan my wife, leave the kids in the car, something might be wrong, and sure enough, I walk into the house, with the front door kicked open and all of our electronics were stolen! This was the second time in 3 years! All the TV's, CD's, stereo equipment, everything again! We had a golden retriever, named Ginger, and all I kept thinking was, they killed the dog, which is really all that mattered. She came rambling down the stairs tail wagging like nothing happened. What a sigh of relief. That's all my family cared about either. She was part of the family and she was unharmed thank god! Those are the times that put your life in perspective,

So 1994 was good, we made money and that was the goal, I guess. but something was missing. I started buying futures and options to cover us, in an ever changing market. it was no longer just speculator's, dentists and doctor's, it was the real deal it was guys and girls in 'fidelity and Morgan Stanley that found commodities can make you a lot of money if you were willing to speculate. Think about it as someone that doesn't give a crap about your business and really doesn't know anything about it but just wants to make money on the crop estimate to the weather. So we are in a business that buys the physical product but have no control of the pricing. That is a settling feeling right? NOOOOO. But that is when it changed, and I went to the owner and said we have to be in the game if we fixed coffee at $1.35 and the market goes to $1.15 we are in trouble. It will directly effect our gross margin. So I developed a system to not capture all the market swings but to take

So there we were, high times, good times. I had all kinds of ideas. I am thinking we could partner larger distributors together, or get one big company to buy something locally with a real presence that we don't already supply. Win Win. Wow, now I am in Mergers & acquisitions, along with everything else. That is a slippery slope, but hey I am not a skier, but what a bang for oyur buck if you could pull it off right? I was a risk taker, but not in the way people think about it. I would do anything to advance the business, I wasn't going skydiving. So I would say I was a corporate risk taker, and who better than me? I had already exceeded some of the goals I had. But when you do that you either are satisfied and say, I am good, or you say, is this all there is? NOOOO There has to be more, and then another whole list blurts out of your brain. It is time to climb the mountain again. Plain and simple. But it is never that simple, what you learn is there is corporate jealousy an

did you notice the ambiguousness? I am becoming more and more in tuned to how people think I am blowing my horn! I am not blowing a horn, I am creating a symphonic and true bridge to corporate accountability and really how things work in a privately held corporation. So it is May 1994, I was urging that based on our continued explosive growth, we should minimize our exposure to unexpected and really unmanageable market swings. I had been reaching out and  talking to many contacts and broker's I have had the pleasure to meet, traveling to these ultra luxurious conferences  and meetings, that no one else even cared about in the company. I will never forget it, I finally convinced my owner to buy futures, not fix coffee based on contractual real  life pricing. I devised a plan where we could actually capture more profit company wide, if we executed it right and we were diligent and very disciplined. In other words, we would protect our downside potential with options and protect our u