Announcer:

Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what's next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. Join in on a great conversation today with some of the world's great influencers as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game changers they are today. Now here's Tony DUrso.

Tony:

Welcome. I'm your host Tony DUrso. I interview elite entrepreneurs and I thank you for joining us. This show is dedicated to helping you turn your vision into reality. Today, we're going to talk about coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. As you know, my interviews with the world's elite entrepreneurs are all about helping you launch your new business or take your business to the next level. Sometimes the penny drops with the right information for you to start something profitable yourself or help you do your job a whole lot better. Would you please help me get my show to those that need to hear this in the world? Please share and consider giving me a review. The easy way is to go to Apple podcasts or go to ratethispodcast.com/tony. Thanks for your kind review in advance. Today's show is about coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. Let's see what we can learn today. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary recap of what we went over, so stay tuned for that. Tyler Ornstein loved the taste and smell of coffee from his first sip at 5 years old. But his father couldn’t tolerate it because it upset his stomach. One day, Tyler asked him if he could make a coffee that both of them could drink. And with that, we have coffee reinvented. Here we go. Hi Tyler. Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. So good to have you on with us today.

Tyler:

Tony. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on

Tony:

The honor is mine, Tyler. I'm a coffee person. I think I talk about coffee about half of my episodes. Maybe not so much, but I talk about it quite a bit. I'm a coffee man. I'm Italian, as everyone knows. I love a good, good strong coffee, and I'm really interested in this for multiple reasons, but before we dive into all about coffee reinvented, let's kind of take it from the beginning. Tyler, can you tell us how did it all start for you? What's your backstory?

Tyler:

Yeah, absolutely. So when I was 14 years old, my father came to me and said, what's the second largest commodity item in the world? I didn't know, so I went to Google and I looked it up, and first was oil/ petroleum and the second was coffee. Coffee's a $1.6 trillion industry that's grown by leaps and bounds. Last year actually it grew by 15%, which is insane because usually our industry grows by 2 to 3%. So the magnitude of how much coffee is drank exceeded by our wildest dreams. And I think it has a lot to do with people working at home. They're ordering more coffee, they're consuming more coffee, they're using more coffee because obviously there was COVID and obviously we're still in COVID, but the point is long story short, I'm very honored to bring to the world the world's first and only acid-free coffee. That's coffee that doesn't give you heartburn, indigestion and upset stomach. Now, how did that come about? Well, my father ... at 15, sorry ...when I was 14, he came to me and then he said, well, I have stomach issues and I want to figure out how to reinvent the coffee. So him and I had bonded over coffee and at one point.... By the way, there's a backstory, he's a biochemist so he figured out when the Tannic and Lipid acids bloom in the roasting process and by figuring out when the Tannic and Lipid acids bloom, believe it or not, he was able to figure out the process using hot air not blooming the Tannic and Lipid acids and creating a neutral pH in the roast.

Tony:

Very interesting. And for the audience, I've enjoyed Tyler's coffees. It's akin to Sanka, if you don't mind me saying that. I don't know if anyone drinks Sanka anymore. I don't even know if it's on anymore. It's a very mild coffee and it's the type of coffee my wife enjoys. She enjoys mild coffee. Me, it can't get strong enough, but that's a different point, but it's a very mild coffee. And I hope I'm saying it in a good light and there's absolutely no, I guess it's the acid after effects. It's absolutely just not there. It's amazing.

Tyler:

Yeah. Especially if you use whole bean in the espresso. It makes a phenomenal espresso and the crema that sits on top is really thick. And it's because of our roasting process that we're able to yield a really nice and flavorful full body. Again, no bitterness at the end. We have an 80% retention rate on our customer base and it's a consumable. So people love the product and we love them for it.

Tony:

I'm so impressed. And you've sold well over 2 million cups and it's in many of the larger stores in the US for sure.

Tyler:

Yeah. We're at Natural Grocers, Hy-Vee. On the docket for '21 is an insane amount of how many stores are interested in bringing on the brand. We were actually geared up and ready to run. From '19 to '20, we were going to start opening some doors and then the world door shut on us like everyone else. And everyone that's the buyer had to work from home and they weren't expecting see any new product lines. I hope to God, we can see a progression in this new year.

Tony:

I so much hope that we can go back to normal. I really, really do. Tyler, on your coffee. So as I understand it, it all started when your dad who is a biochemist helped figure out how to remove the acid from the coffee, but what was that vision or that stimulus that took you into Tyler's Coffees and actually marketing it and producing it?

Tyler:

I've been drinking coffee since I was two years old. I'm 6' 3" so it stunted my growth, but I can tell you this. I never thought I was actually going to sell coffee for a career. It's kind of ironic, but I wanted to be a pilot and I wanted to go to the Air Force and I wanted to fly F-16s and be a fighter pilot. But I don't know. I think it took a mind of its own and over the summer between middle school to high school, I started just going door to door. Again, this is summer in Arizona so sweating my butt off and trying to sell a hot beverage. Crazy, right? Like Tyler, what are you doing? But lo and behold, I just handed off samples and asked the people that opened the door if I could get their name and number and call them back and see what they thought. And I'll never forget, this is the lady that actually started me on my path. And frankly, I love it so much because every single day I wake up, I know I'm helping people with their issues. And so I called her and I said, this is Tyler. I gave this coffee sample. By the way, the company was not founded yet. I mean, this wasn't like an LLC. We didn't have a tax ID number. We weren't making millions of dollars. You know, this was conceptual. And I asked the lady, I said yeah, this is Tyler, the guy that gave me the coffee. She goes, you know what? That's really good coffee and I liked it a lot. Where do I get it? And it was a light bulb moment. I said, well, from me. She said, well, how much is it? And I was like, a dollar. I don't know. But what it was is, it was enough of a spark to start a raging bonfire, because I got the inclination that if someone wanted to give me their hard-earned money for a product that I'm trying to peddle, there might be something here. And so I started doing that a little bit, going to different neighborhoods over the summer and starting to get some cash. And then I built an online website in 2006. And in 2006, just to give you an idea, Facebook was just founded. So one of the biggest corporations in the world, and this was a side project for Zuckerberg, and I have to definitely tell you that I was the first outside of Gevalia to have a subscription platform. The reason why I can tell you that is because I had coders that I had to hire to develop my subscription platform. And I said, look, if I don't have a subscription platform, I'm going to lose at least a third of my business. Obviously now everything's subscription, but I thought about this long and hard, and during my high school years, I was able to really start a business. Started out of my bedroom, fulfilling the orders. So, part of my bedroom was my desk and office and computer, and then part of it was shipping. I brought in a box of a two-ounce perk packs and hand packed every order.

Tony:

What was the purpose to do it? I got that you went door to door and I got that's how it started, and I got how this vision happened. It started with just your dad who had the acid issue, but what's this underlying fire, or this reason and motivation for doing that?

Tyler:

The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation did a study in 2016, and they found that 15 million Americans suffer from stomach related modalities. That number has increased dramatically. I don't know the new numbers, so I can't speak on that, but what I will tell you is that you have a 15 million base of people that suffer from issues. And I tell people this all the time when I was traveling and I was speaking on stages and being interviewed I said the most important thing in business, but the one key takeaway that has changed every business owner's life is one word. I boiled it down to one word, and that word is help - HELP.

Tony:

I was going to say I thought that word was coffee.

Tyler:

No, it's help.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. But first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Announcer:

You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with special VIP guests. Now back to Tony and his guest.

Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Today's show is coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that, and also stay tuned to the very, very end of this broadcast for some exciting info about my live Thursday show on stereo.com/tdurso. I share some audience comments. You'll love it. Tyler and his dad designed a propriety computerized Z-Roasting system and figured out how to roast the bean perfectly without letting the tannic and lipid acids form, which normally wreak havoc on those with GI problems from indigestion, bloating and heartburn or who are plagued by tooth enamel decay. All right. And now back to the chat with Tyler.

Tyler:

You look at Amazon. He helped the market get faster products to consumers. You look at Tesla. He was able to figure out a way to create electric car that's usable. You look at Facebook. They were able to network their environment together to build a social media platform that now everyone uses as a first name basis same as Twitter. All these companies started with one premise and that was help. Look at Uber. People thought, are you crazy? No one's going to use their vehicle to pick up strangers. They did, because people needed help. They needed help to get something out of a resource, out of a product or a service. So by being able to help 50 million Americans that suffer from stomach related issues, and frankly we've only have like maybe half a percent of the industry, so there's a lot more that we need to tap into. Really quick sideline is our coffee is nicknamed the back-order coffee. People say, Oh, that's a great problem to have Tyler. And I say, fantastic. It's still a problem and it's really annoying, but it is a good problem to have. Our coffee is always on backorder. Our demand is through the roof. Our supply is limited. We take the utmost care to manufacturing our coffee to 200 step roasting processes proprietary, and the human hand never touches the bean. It's all computer driven. We buy the highest quality Mylar bags so that the freshness is number one key. We just brought in our own manufacturing line for K-cups because we didn't like how we were told manufacturing and how it was not the freshest. Our number one job at Tyler's Coffees is to create the most perfect and most flavorful cup of coffee anyone's ever had.

Tony:

We're talking about coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein, and you can find him and this great coffee at tylerscoffees.com. Did I say that right?

Tyler:

Yeah. You can also find it at Amazon, you find it at Walmart, you find it on eBay, you find it at Bariatric PAG, you find it on American Bariatric. You can Google search. I mean, we're in over 30 retailers. We have over 500 stores, brick and mortar.

Tony:

tylerscoffees.com. tylerscoffees.com. Tyler, let's get into your vision path. I joke a bit, you know, I love coffee. I've been drinking coffee since I was three years old so you beat me by a year.

Tyler:

Nice! It was the Italian go-to breakfast, you know, coffee and a big cereal bowl with some what we called Gonnella bread, which is a big, giant loaf of bread, and you just rip off a clump, you dip it in the coffee and you eat it. That was our Sicilian breakfast.

Tyler:

I love Italian food. My favorite to dunk the coffee is biscotti. So I love the biscottis.

Tony:

Don't get me going. That is habit for me. You just can't do once. We talked about coffee. You've mentioned it a little bit, but I want to really bring it home. Why is it so different?

Tyler:

Well, there's coffees out there and to me, it's an honor and a privilege to be ripped off and duplicated. We call R and D and there's a lot of low acid coffees out there in the marketplace. Frankly, any brand, any major brand will have a low acid variety. Low acid is an interesting play on words. It's a theory. I don't think that it has any backing or any validity to it, but what's so amazing about our product is we're the world's first and only acid free coffee.

Tony:

I see. So you set the stage and now you've got a lot of copycats, but still you've said it different. And aside from the name brands, is there anything else that sets it apart? Aside from the fact that you're there first, is there anything that stimulates or make someone want to buy Tyler Coffee?

Tyler:

The reason why you want to drink Tyler's Coffees is because it's a healthy coffee. It's coffee that again doesn't hurt your GI tract. So people that have Crohn's, GERD, leaky gut, OAB, colitis, they can't drink acidic products, period. We're talking no soda, even no soda water because it's a caustic. Lemon juice is out of the question, tomatoes. I personally have GERD. I don't have a very severe case of it, but I do have GERD and it's so ironic. I can't drink other people's coffee. I mean, I love coffee, right? But ever since I started just drinking Tyler's coffee, it's the only coffee I can drink. And yes, of course the CEO and founder is going to say that, but that's the truth. And you know what? I love to tell people - do not take my word for it. Do not listen to me. Do not think I'm a crackpot. Go and do your own due diligence. Go do your own research. So if you go to our website, you'll see independent customers talking about how wonderful our coffee is and how fantastic it is. We can't make those up. Those are customers that get the reviews.

Tony:

Tyler, what's you're saying is not all acid-free coffee is the same. There's actually a difference. The difference in the product.

Tyler:

Oh, very much so. Oh yes.

Tony:

I get the difference and I get all the process and the love and the work and everything that goes into it and the benefits. I get that, but you're still going to compete against giant corporations, huge names, and they'll come out with it - if they don't have it already - they'll come out with an acid free coffee, but you're still growing your business like crazy, so what kind of strategies do you use to deal with these big boys?

Tyler:

Well, first to market, it's a very big aspect of all this. We are the Uber or Lyft if you want to talk about ride share of the acid-free coffee industry. When you hear acid free, the first thing that pops into people's minds is Tyler's and we worked very hard for that. I mean, 15 years. That is a good question. They've come out with low acid coffee. They haven't been able to crack the code and that's not to say that they're not going to, but again, we're the world's first and only and we have trademarks. It's not like we just didn't protect ourselves, but it's very difficult to figure out what we've created.

Tony:

I understand. And with any business, especially for the scale of the size and the magnitude you have, again, over 2 million cups sold, there's capital that's needed to get the company going and starting as everyone knows. It's amazing. You've bootstrapped everything yourself?

Tyler:

Yes, absolutely. First one to the farmer's markets at five in the morning, selling the coffee per the cup all the way to now 500 stores across the country, 30 retailers online. We now have a warehouse. We've got 15 people in the warehouse. We've got a full call center out in Oklahoma. I've got an office, but yeah, a hundred percent. Never took a loan; never took a dollar from anyone. Just reinvested into the company. Kept buying more coffee and selling more coffee, and I'll tell you. There's an interesting reality to this is I remember - full on disclosure - I remember having to sleep on a mattress on the floor. I didn't have any furniture, I ate Top Ramen to buy more coffee because I knew that at one point, this is all going to pay off and obviously it has. I've done very well for myself.

Tony:

Absolutely extraordinary. And again, another point that I want to reiterate to the audience is you started this when you were 15 years old and people are going to say, how did you get the sense to not even take other people's money to build this? Did your dad help a lot? How did you grow this? And what advice did you get?

Tyler:

My dad definitely helped a lot by producing the products, yeah but did he help me out in the business? Not monetarily, no. He helped me a little bit, but I guess the best way to say it is there's a lot to be said for grassroots and pull your bootstraps up and just go out there and do it. I think a lot of people out there in the industry - business, not industry - business think that they have to find other people's money and I'm not against that. The only thing that I am against is that you lose control. You lose the ability to have control of how you want the vision to be at Tyler or any company. And long story short, you have to understand that anytime you ask for money, there's always strings attached regardless of whether it's going to be an interest rate or if it's going to be equity.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. But first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Tony:

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Announcer:

You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with special VIP guests. Now back to Tony and his guest.

Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Today's show is coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that, and also stay tuned to the very, very end of this broadcast for some exciting info about my live Thursday show on stereo.com/tdurso. I share some audience comments. You'll love it. As we talk about in this episode, Tyler with a natural entrepreneur spirit, setting off door to door on his bicycle to sell what soon became known as Tyler's coffee. It has since evolved into a full warehouse, a team, 80% growth year over year with more than 2 million cups sold, and distribution in 1000 independent grocery stores across the US. And now back to the chat with Tyler.

Tony:

Tyler, young people in business is .... well, we're no stranger to that. We've heard all the stories, but here you are .15, 16, 17 years old running around peddling your coffee. How did people react to someone so young with such an interesting, unique product and how did you deal with that?

Tyler:

Well, the saying goes, the more NOs you get, the more yeses. It was just a numbers game.

Tony:

What kept you going? Here you are...?

Tyler:

Coffee!!

Tony:

Was it the coffee that kept you awake though? What kept you going? Cause I'm sure it wasn't all roses and everything at the very beginning. You went through your hard times. What kept you going regardless?

Tyler:

There were a lot of times that I wanted to quit. A lot of times. And anytime that I got this inclination that I wanted to quit, what kept me really going honestly, hand on heart - my customers. Knowing that I'm actually helping and supporting a bigger cause than monetary gain.

Tony:

That is a powerful answer. I totally get it. I know at the very beginning, as a young person, when you started getting customers, you mentioned earlier, you didn't know the price so you said a dollar. Was it well priced or did you underprice it and you kind of had to in a way, eat it to build up?

Tyler:

Well, again, I mean, we're talking at a very young age. My father was the one that was bringing me the coffee pro bono, but we're talking maybe $200, $300 coffee, but let me explain. Every business, regardless of Fortune 500 multinational conglomerate to your mom-and-pop shop down the street, they all have a life cycle, just like any human. There is conception, which is an idea that's in your head that you think you can do. There's birthing, and the birth is essentially that you've created a conceivable idea that now has validity and legs. And then you have adolescence... sorry, childhood. You have childhood where you're growing, you're stumbling, you kind of don't know what you're doing. You have adolescence and then you have adulthood. So adulthood would be the Teslas, the Amazons, the Facebooks, the Twitters, the big boys, the multinational conglomerate billion dollar companies. But all these companies, they all started from a concept and they all started from birth and they had to grow on their own. Now, did they have help from venture capitalists that sat in the San Fernando Valley or not Santa Monica but San Francisco, and they had billion-dollar hedge funds behind them? Yeah. But again, you had to build this concept to the investor. You had at least sell them on the concept. So I think that anyone that wants to start business has to really start from the get-go. I think that there's a lot of people out there that are going to be successful in whatever they do, and I think there's going to be a lot of people that are unsuccessful in whatever they do. And I think that the differentiator in all this is the word help. I really truly honestly believe that. The YouTubes where you watch the guy that gets out of a Lamborghini, flashes $10,000 bricks, walks into a mansion? Okay, I can pay three grand and I can have that for a day. You're not faking anyone. Anyone that wants to get on an Amazon get rich quick scheme and buy a lot of sh*t from Alibaba and resell it at a higher rate because they want to make that margin, you can do that, but that has a shelf life and you're going to find out real quick that if you don't keep figuring out what to buy and sell, you're going have a problem. Now, some people do that very well. Another thing is buying stocks or buying crypto. That's not a bad thing, and I strongly suggest that you should diversify your funds once you start getting it. But the real success, the real people that make a lot of money are people that actually come up with a unique and different and one of a kind, and we call it blue water territory. You want a territory where there's little to no competition. And then the other thing is that that product or service is helping a problem that they need to fix.

Tony:

Beautiful. Help is the most important thing. What a great purpose. Tyler, you mentioned a little early on what the future may hold. I like to kind of dive into this a little bit more. You mentioned K-cups. Tell us - what are you looking to accomplish in the next few years?

Tyler:

Well, as every business out there we're trying to get higher market share, more volume out there. And again, every time we sell a bag of Tyler's Coffee, it's going to a good cause. It's going to people that can't drink coffee anymore like they used to, or we also have a new market sector where it's yuppie millennials that are saying, Hey, I'm organic or I'm alkaline dieting or I'm detoxing or whatever and I can't have acid. So they check us out and they go, Oh my gosh, this is fricking awesome. We had a video posted by a 30 something year old, I'm 31. So the market used to be geriatrics people that have really bad issues in your stomach and a problem in their GI tract. But then we are also seeing the millennials coming out of the woodwork saying, Hey I'm going to be old at one point. And I think that I've got a little bit of the expendable money. And I think that I can make some health choices that down the road are going to benefit me. So we're kind of hitting both sides but obviously more market share. obviously, we want to keep reinventing the product line. We're not going to change the product line, but we might come out with Nespresso pods down the road. That's an idea. We have looked at instant, but it has a huge problem where we use a chemical process. We can't figure out an organic way of doing it, so that's kind of an issue. Again, it's just money, but we're trying to figure out a way to have a fully biodegradable K-cup. That would be phenomenally big, especially just for the industry of Keurig because we're talking like 2 billion of these capsules are consumed every year and they use polyethylene plastics, which is oil-based plastic which does not biodegrade, so landfills are just filling up with these pods, these K-cups and I think it's a problem. I think really what we need to look at is it's a good thing to say, Oh, we need to talk about the environment, but really and truly, we need to figure out a way to dispose of our waste in a much more efficient way. That's beside the point of coffee, but if we can create a fully biodegradable K-cup, then we have a little bit of a slice of the pie to help the world as a whole.

Tony:

Totally with you on that. And by the way, on the K-cups I have reusable K-cups so I just take your coffee, put it in and boom, a hot piping fresh cup of Tyler's Coffee right there. And I encourage everyone, get through the little reusable pods and you can start right away. Don't wait for the K-cup. We're always on the lookout for what helps bring us success or helps take our business to the next level. Are there any personal habits that contribute to your vision success, aside from sleeping on the mattress when you have to and eating the Top Ramen? If you've got to make your product go, I get it. We have entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners. We're looking for insight, inspiration, motivation, anything that we can use.

Tyler:

Yeah, absolutely. I've said this a lot. I've been on over a hundred podcasts and I say this time and time again. The only time, only time that I see if you're in product ...Now sure this is a different story. A soft product is also a different story. So if you're selling a software or an app, what have you, that's a little bit different. I don't know that much about the space, but I can tell you a hard good that is a SKU'd good - in the industry we call it a SKU or it has a UPC on it. People say, Oh, I need money. I need money. I need money, I need money, I need money, I need money. And yeah. Okay. You need money. Everyone needs money. No one's going to say, Hey, I'm a business owner and no-one is going to say, Hey, I don't need more money, but I can't stress this enough. If you think your idea is a good idea, you don't need money because your customers are going to be able to fund your company. The only time you're going to take money is if you need to buy a inventory lot for a big PO. We're talking, I just got half of Walmart wants to do a rollout or half of this big operation wants to do, or Amazon wants to do a half a million-dollar rollout. Okay. Go get a loan. Get your money for your inventory. That's positive debt. A lot of business owners love to buy things that's out of their means, and I just get a kick out of it because I'm like, okay. I get it. Nice house, nice car, flashy, you're stuntin'. Nice watch! You're ballin', bro. Way to go! Unfortunately, if you bought that on credit, you've negatively transacted yourself. Can you pay that off? Of course, you can. There's no question about it, but the amount of money that you're buying that's going to cause you the ability to buy more inventory or more advertising or more employees, and that takes a profit line, your bottom line, and then you can go buy the house. Then you can go buy the cars. Then you can go buy a watch. Now, would I say that I have a mortgage on my house? Yeah. And I also have another house that's free and clear and I get rent on it. And guess what? That rent pays for my mortgage. So it's how you leverage yourself.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. But first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Tony:

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Tony:

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Announcer:

You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with special VIP guests. Now back to Tony and his guest.

Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Today's show is coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that, and also stay tuned to the very, very end of this broadcast for some exciting info about my live Thursday show on stereo.com/tdurso. I share some audience comments. You'll love it. Tyler's Coffee was the preferred coffee of the 2008 Academy Awards. And now back to the chat with Tyler.

Tyler:

But yeah, I would say that there's a lot to be said in a startup phase of a business to not go and buy negative debt. No matter how much you want a new car, no matter how much you want a new house, no matter how much you want a new lifestyle, don't buy it with credit. Buy it with your profits. That's a good idea, and in the long run, it's going to really help you. The only time you're going to buy something on a credit is if you can make money on it. Period.

Tony:

I absolutely love that answer. And I got to tell you, after over 500 interviews, I don't think I've heard it put that way before. Just love it. Thank you so much for sharing that. That is gold nuggets to everybody in the audience. Check that out. Listen to this interview again. That's the stuff. Okay. You want to know about the stuff? That's the stuff. Tyler, are there any great resources that you would like to share with our audience entrepreneurs? Things that you use that you found very helpful benefit. It could be a book. It could be software; could be anything. The door is opening. What would you like to mention?

Tyler:

There's a company called ShippingEasy®, not to be confused with ShipStation. ShippingEasy® is much better. Much, much, much, much, much, much better, much better, like a thousand times back. They actually did it right and I applaud them because they're a multimillion-dollar company and they deserve every penny because they did it the way that business owners really want. They have built a subscription platform of emailing and shipping data. What that means is that we send out the product and then we can actually track when that is delivered via our tracking number. The tracking number pings the email server. The email server sends it out and says, Hey, how'd you like the coffee? If they say I loved it, we send them another email that gives them a percentage off the next order. This is a system that is plug and play. You set it up, all the parameters, get it all taken care of. If you don't know how to do it, Fiverr. I'm sure they can figure that out. I'm sure you can find someone that will figure that out, or if you have someone in-house that's your IT guy, they can do that. But for products specifically ShippingEasy® is the way to go. Very, very useful tool. We use it for all our email marketing. We use it for all our inventory control. We use it for all our future inventory purchases. It gives you a forecast. It's really just awesome, awesome software and I strongly suggest it. Another one, obviously everyone knows this word, but I can't find better one for e-commerce would be Shopify. Shopify, they got their act together. All their apps are vetted through the Shopify platform so that there's no API integration errors. It's good stuff. Another thing would be, I don't know QuickBooks. These are ones that are pretty common, but I would say ShippingEasy® is a unique one that people need to look into if they're going to be doing goods. Services are different. I don't think shipping anything is service. I think that's all soft products. Goods is definitely something you want to look into.

Tony:

Once again, we talked about coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein and you can find him at Tylerscoffees.com. Tyler, great insights, great information. I just loved it. I'm infused. I hope our audience is. I just want to thank you so much for sharing with us today.

Tyler:

That's right. Let me ask one last question because I want to hear it from you and only you. What do you think about Tyler's Coffee?

Tony:

I think I said that at the very beginning. It's a very mild coffee for me and you can immediately taste that there's nothing ... that acid is not there, and I've been drinking coffee for a long time with acid and my gut can deal with it as well as I like very thick, strong coffee. I mean, a nice Cuban coffee once in a while or a Middle Eastern coffee, I just enjoy that. But then when you drink that and it's just one a day and you're done, right?

Tyler:

Yeah.

Tony:

I grew up drinking coffee. To me, it's a staple. I cannot not drink coffee, but when it comes later in the day, this is the key part. You've had your coffee. You've had that whatever you need, but you still want that taste. That's where I think you're a good match. You're a good blend because it's mild. It's very soft. It's easy on the stomach. I don't have any stomach issues, thank God. I have never. But if someone does, this would be a great coffee for them. Like I said, my wife likes the very mild coffee, which we haven't sampled all of your wares. I've only sampled one, which is your organic. I don't know if you make other coffees, mild or strong.

Tyler:

So, we're the Coca Cola. Again, not a good representation because Coca-Cola is bad for you. It rots your teeth and your bones, but we only make one roast and we're not going to change it. We make decaf and we make regular and that's it. And when people use this as a perscription, not a subscription, we're now messing with people's health and we just can't change the formula on the whim, nor would we want to, because why would you change something that has an 80% retention rate?

Tony:

It's absolutely amazing how you have such a loyal strong customer base. You've done so many things right. You've learned also from the school of hard knocks. Absolutely loved it. This is great interview, Tyler. Once again, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Hey, fellow entrepreneurs. Thanks for hanging out with me while I featured an elite entrepreneur who took his vision to reality. I'm sure this was as inspiring for you as it was for me to do this interview. We learned some great points on making it yourself, bootstrapping and of course, making great coffee. We talked about coffee reinvented with Tyler Ornstein. Do you know what is the second largest commodity item in the world? I didn't know that answer either. It's coffee. Imagine that! Now I know why I love it so much. It's a trillion-dollar industry and grew 15% during the 2020 events. With help from his biochemist dead, they made the world's first acid-free coffee. Tyler went door to door as a kid in the hot Arizona climate, introducing people to his new coffee brand. What was he thinking? Well, it worked and Tyler's Coffee grew from there. Tyler found that the one takeaway, the one word that changed every business owner's life - help! Ponder that thoroughly. Do you make it clear what your business helps people to do? That is indeed a magic key word. Tyler names the giant businesses, and how much they help others and how that compares to how successful they are. Take note and ponder this well. Listen to this interview again to help you in your business, career or startup. The coffee is unique. As I mentioned in the interview, it's very mild, and that acid feeling is simply not there. You can hear the care that Tyler puts into his coffee, as it's always back ordered as they cannot make enough to fill the demand fast enough. It's a problem, though a nice problem to have. The demand does not make them change their coffee processing. They hold to their values and don't change, despite the waiting customers. That factor keeps their coffee in high demand. I've seen businesses change their product in order to accommodate more requests, and that ultimately leads to dwindling sales and disaster. Case in point - I remember a coffee house, a coincidental example, and they had great coffee that used to have a line out the door. I loved it and I would gladly stand in that line and just wait and wait and wait to get that delicious coffee. Eventually the coffee was changed. In something like six months, the place was shut down. Yeah, it was that fast. They changed other things too, but that great coffee that was getting the crowds had changed as part of the rapid demise. And now back to Tyler. Their growth is phenomenal and they are the essential, the Uber or Lyft of acid-free coffee. Remarkable! Over 2 million cups sold, 500 stores across the country, 30 retailers online, a well-staffed warehouse, a full call center and more. I know I said some of this before, but it's just amazing and it's all bootstrapped by themselves. No loans. Remember again, that helping others is their mainstay. That will work for you too. There's so much more I got out of this interview. What did you get? I would love to know how you use this information to help you in your business or career. Did this interview give you any ideas for your business? Did it stimulate you to take some action? Please share and grab hold of your vision. Decide you're either going to start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. It always starts with a decision and you can get my Vision Map to help you along the process. The eBook is at tonydurso.com/books. I created my empire in just a few years. I wrote up the Vision Map as my guide, and I'm giving it to you now so that you can do it too. Let's help you move on your journey to success. And once again, please consider supporting the show with a nice review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/tony. Thanks guys, and remember: just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds and join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show.

Announcer:

We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso Show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 5:00 PM Eastern time, 2:00 PM. Pacific time on the Voice America Influencers channel.