S1E21 · Sam Keck

Hey guys, welcome to the Virtus Performance podcast. Today I sat down and interviewed the godfather or one of the four godfathers of common folk coffee, Sammy Keck. Sammy is someone who I've gotten to know fairly well over the last probably 12, 18 months but more so the last couple of months. He's an incredible human. He is the, I guess, idea behind common folk and common folk coffee and he's the person that kind of helps bring that idea to the world. He's an amazing person. He's a great leader of people. He's a Christian, which as most of you guys who know me will understand my, I guess, adversity to religion and things like that.

So it was a very, very interesting podcast. We talked about all things business and life and work and all those things so hopefully you guys get a lot out of it. Enjoy. My personal and business goal is to be just a little bit better every day. I believe everyone, especially normal people, have a story to tell. The Virtus podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests. Sammy, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Lachie. It's good to be here. It's very, very good to have you.

How's your day been? Pretty good. Pretty good. Drove to the city for absolutely no reason at all. Thanks for reminding me again. For those that are listening and those that have just started listening, this podcast started about 10 minutes ago, but I forgot to hit record, forgot to plug the microphone in. So we're revisiting a few things so Sammy can think of better answers. We're true professionals. Yeah, spot on, spot on. I am winging it, but we can't win them all. What gets you out of bed in the morning? All right. I think the answer's probably the same as what I gave you off the record.

But pull me up if I'm changing anything. Look, seven takes of the snooze button. I reckon that probably takes me half an hour to an hour to sort of wake up from first, I don't know, removing myself from my dreams and kind of placing my brain back into the real world. Much to this matter with my wife, who just, if she wakes up, she's out of bed. Yeah, she's one of those ones. Yeah, yeah. But I go to sleep late, so I don't feel too bad. But what gets me up in terms of a philosophical thing?

I don't know. The excitement of sort of what's going to happen. I'm essentially living the dream, you know, I'm doing what I would never have thought was possible, but what I always wanted to do. So yeah, it's easy enough to get out of bed and to go into work, even if it's gonna be tough stuff to do. I love walking through the doors. I love having a coffee. But yeah, let's be honest. Okay, sorry. Forget all of that bullshit. Coffee gets me up out of bed every morning. Yeah, there you go. Simple answer. Coffee always wins.

Are you a straight out of bed? Like once you actually get out of bed, are you a straight to work kind of guy? Or do you hang out at home? No, no, I don't, I get a lot of energy from probably from people. So I probably want to get to work as quick as I can, have a coffee, kind of get my mind in the game. If I'm at home in the morning, like I'd have a reason to have got up for say like two hours before work. There'd be a reason, like, you know, whether I had to do something or for, you know, I don't eat breakfast, I just drink coffee.

But being a boss, you can just roll in whatever you want. Yeah. Yeah. I try, I try and make sure I get there like 10 minutes before my aligator time. Don't ask the staff whether I actually do that because I like to set the example, you know. Oh, we're usually in there for our third coffee and you stroll in, you stroll in mid-morning. Hey guys. For those that don't know, what do you do? Well, that's a great question. At the moment, I run sort of a three businesses, I suppose, but they're all coffee related. Two of them are cafes and one of them is a wholesale roastery.

And two of them are in one location, which is super convenient. So I, yeah, I'm a coffee guy. I import, roast, make, deliver, drink coffee. Awesome. Awesome. Why coffee? It's a really good question. And I've been asked this a few times and I guess the answer probably hasn't really changed, although it keeps evolving. Like why still coffee is something that I've been thinking too. I think initially I just really loved food and sort of wine and coffee and the finer things in life. I kind of got the opportunity to work at some cool cafes when

I was pretty young and kind of fell in love with how different it was to say, you know, the, my other experience, which is working in like a fish and chip shop, like pizza shop and like regular stuff, basic foods versus sort of this, like almost an art, you know, and chefs, you know, can talk for ages about, you know, like food and passion and baristas were the same and it was same with wine and coffee seemed to be the one aspect that had been investigated the least. No one really knew what they were doing, but everyone said they did.

It was a lot of secrets. Like they used to be like, you know, like you had to pull a shot through the espresso machine in the morning and throw it out because you know, somehow the machine would make it taste bad the first shot. I think it was going to taste like metal or something, but it was like, actually just like I later found out it was just bullshit. But sorry that you throw out more coffee so you had to buy more coffee from me, which is kind of funny. That's super cool. So how did you first kind of dive into the coffee industry?

So my first job making coffee, where I basically weren't making coffee, was at Merrick's General Store. Back when it was owned by the Islands and the Kelmans years ago. And I was lucky enough to sort of, I think, have days off each school. I think it would have been year 12 at the time, but that meant I could work when I needed someone to make coffee. They taught me and I loved it. And from there I sort of tried to get barista jobs whenever I wanted for a job. And also when I was at university, I used to get the uni Wi-Fi for free at Seven Seeds, which is a pretty famous roaster in Melbourne.

And Seven Seeds didn't offer free Wi-Fi. It was just sort of early days when only McDonald's offered free Wi-Fi. But because I got Wi-Fi from uni in their cafe, you just sit there doing my assignments. And that's when I sort of started paying attention to roasting. So I just taste their coffees and kind of talk to the baristas, like probably much to their frustration and annoyance because like this stupid guy asking who to have coffee. Surely they'd love that, having someone come in and be, I guess, passionate about what they're doing. Surely that's going to get them up for about a hour.

And you're probably right. I reckon back in the day, which was like when it was probably about 10 years going out. How old are you now? Twenty-nine. Twenty-nine, good. Thirty-eight. Good. I haven't hit that top of the hill yet. I'm still climbing. Just slower than I used to be. No, but I reckon you're probably right. They probably did enjoy it more than, say, someone who works there now might. No discredit to any of the great baristas and people working at those famous roasteries. But when the industry was new, because they were one of the first, everybody was so excited who was involved with it because everything was different and new.

No one was importing specialty single origin coffees. No one was working with farmers. No one was roasting their own. So anyone who showed interest in that was welcomed. And actually that's probably one reason why not only did I like coffee, but then I continued to develop it as my passion because it was something that people were willing to share. And it was breaking what had been those old industry secrets and all the bells and whistles that they were really, yeah, all these people were like, "Hey, that stuff is rubbish. Let's focus on flavor and actual quality."

And it was exciting. Like it really resonated with me because I'm a passionate person. I like to do things well. So when I found other passionate people who were trying to do things well, and it involved food and coffee. It was an easy sell. So from sitting down in Seven Senses and doing your study and sitting on their Wi-Fi, how did you progress from that? I realized that, although I loved what I was studying, that I also really loved hospitality. And I basically asked myself a question. I was like, "If I wanted to do both, which one should I do first?"

And the answer was hospitality because I knew how exhausting it was. It wasn't a desk job. It was on your feet, long hours, also super risky. If I was going to open my own business, like 80% hospitality businesses don't succeed. So I figured I should do that first when I'm young and I've got nothing to lose, when the passion is still burning and I have energy. And yeah, so I chose it to try and pursue that. And that was when it really changed for me. I wanted to finish my degree, but I knew that immediately after I was going to get a job in a cafe making coffee full time whilst trying to set up my own.

How old were you when you kind of like had that, I guess, realization or when you came to that, "This is what I'm going to do." At the time, I felt like I'd taken too long to come to that realization that now I'm like, "I would've been 20." Because when I was 18, I was going to be a zoologist. I was going to be David Attenborough. And by the time I turned 20, I wanted to be roasting coffee. And so I had a couple of years left at uni, but I knew what I was going to do.

So you started zoology? Yeah. Why? Why did you kind of dive into that? It was a great little segue. Yeah, man, I've been practicing. I'm 20 now, because I guess I had no idea and the voice told me before that that was what you studied. So what, how did you get from, I guess, school to zoology to ditching that and coffee? So I was a weird kid who every time I had like a birthday, this is what my mum tells me, I can't remember him doing this, my mum tells me this. I have a birthday party and I invite all my friends around.

And then I just feel like, they're like, "Oh, what are we going to do? Like pass a parcel or I don't know, tiggy or kick the footy or whatever?" And I'm like, "Yeah, okay." But first, we're going to sit down and watch David Attenborough and Bucking Urges. That's so good. So I just loved animals. I grew up on a, like a hobby farm. My mum loved gardening. She loved the sort of growing our own food and our own produce, but also growing our own animals, like chickens and goats and dogs in Bitten. Back when Bitten was sort of regionally, I guess, before Josh Brown moved in there.

Yeah, shout out. Snake out books and stuff. Oh, shameless plug. Oh, always. We're getting a shout out bell, which is going to sit here and we're going to ding it every time we have a shout out. I think it's at least one free t-shirt there from the snake out there. Oh mate, every, yeah. Oh, that could be, finally get a sponsor for the vodka. Yeah, we'll work that out. I can get sponsored coffees, I reckon. Yeah, it does. It's probably a gene in the t-shirt. Like, shit. Where we at? Yeah, so that was in Bitten. And my mum really encouraged that.

She was a teacher, but she resigned from her job to sort of bring up four kids before entering back into a little bit older. And so we were homeschooled, but also really encouraged to get outside, kind of get our hands dirty. And she was big on sort of education. It's funny because I didn't realize at the time, I just thought it was normal to like to re-own chickens and to, you know, and to watch David Attenborough documentaries. But now I'm kind of like, nah, it was probably my parents' influence. Definitely. But I just loved it. Like I actually knew, I remember probably first I wanted to be an archaeologist.

So I wanted to, or a paleontologist. I went to study dinosaurs. That's cool. And I actually knew the, I couldn't even tell you now, but I knew the scientific names of dinosaurs. That's cool. And I was so excited to do it. And then one day I realized that dinosaurs were all dead. You're just searching for things that have already happened. Yeah. And I couldn't like go out and find a dinosaur. So I moved on to like... How heartbreaking was that as a kid? It was, I think, I don't know. So it probably crushed me. It probably did.

Because there was, I remember getting in trouble with my, it would have been prep or U1 teacher, is we had to write what we did on a weekend and I wrote that I had discovered a dinosaur. And she called my mum and said that I was lying. And so my mum was like, ah, it's great to use this imagination. And I was sitting there thinking, I don't care about my imagination. Like I didn't find a dinosaur. Wait, wait, wait, what? They don't, I couldn't have done that. Like, I mean, I know I was, I know I didn't really, but I thought that it was possible.

I think it would have been then. So I just moved on to other animals and just loved it. Yeah, that's super cool. So I hope it's cool. Well, no, yes, but no. So I still went to schools, but my mum taught at the school I was at. And so she probably taught us a lot before we went inside. Apparently, if you can't really tell, I could talk a lot. Apparently I was talking before I could like crawl around. So people would be like, oh, what a cute little baby. And I'd be like, oh, g'day, how you going?

Yeah. Nice, nice. So did that, so being a paleontologist, or wanting to be a paleontologist and then moving to kind of loving the Dave and Amber stuff, is that kind of what pushed you into that uni degree? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think when I realised that I couldn't discover dinosaurs, on the flip side, I was like, you know, actually, like, I'm so passionate about, like biology and serology, and more importantly, just like, you know, sustainability and seeing what we have preserved for, you know, sort of the future. Thanks, Captain Planet for sort of inspiring me. What a TV show.

Oh, brilliant. Kids are missing out these days. But I just wanted to do serology, I wanted to be able to do that. And then I wanted to be able to communicate that to other people in the same way I felt, you know, Amber had communicated to me just the importance but also just the, the, the, the immensity and like, amazingness of nature and animals, like, so much bigger than humans. Well, I think that's something that so many people don't appreciate as much as they should. Yeah. And I'm sure like, even now, that you're not necessarily studying it anymore.

But yeah, like, I love those David Attenborough documentaries. And I love going hiking, travelling and going to different places where different things exist. So you can see, I guess how insignificant we are as a species or as a, there's people because you see all these amazing things happening. The new, new Blue Earth documentary is coming out soon. I'm so excited. It's going to be great. It looks amazing. So when do you think you kind of knew or kind of had locked in your head, that's what you wanted to do? From, I probably early high school. When did you go to high school?

Flinders. Flinders, cool. In Tyre. I knew that I wanted to do serology. I think from there, I, I kind of floated the idea of getting more into sort of chemistry and physics side of things. But in the end, I think for me, I'm a handsy kind of guy. And the idea that I actually couldn't like touch and interact on a physical level with a lot of what I was doing, what put me back onto like sort of angles. Like the idea of being out in the field and doing surveys of like brush tailed possums was kind of like interesting.

That's really cool. Yeah, I guess it's probably very uncommon for kids to know exactly what they want to do. Well it's funny all the way. But, but yeah, that kind of pushed you to the point where you are now where you know what you're doing. After, after kind of starting to get his coffee and starting to find those jobs, how did it progress from there into, you wanted to run your own business, but how did it progress to actually that eventually? It's, it's a, it's a great question too because it was, it actually took a long time.

I don't, I think it's probably actually quite common for a lot of people that like to have an idea and it takes them years to, to kind of for it to mature into something that's actually doable. One of my good friends, Sarah Dingell is she runs the Commonwealth Work Studio and we actually both sort of share, it would have been yeah, about 18, 19 years of age, sort of this, the pipe dream of having this collaborative space where like having great coffee you can meet, sort of creativity and heart. And we, we wanted to open up a cafe.

It was going to be on Main Street, Mornington or just off in a little corner shop called Foxtrot. We were set on this and it was going to be like Sarah would have this little kind of bench doing glass work and stuff and I'd be serving coffees and we'd have a projector that would have like a, a film on loop of like a fox just running around. This is the serology part of it. It was in Australia, it'd be someone hunting the fox, but if it was in the UK, it'd be fine. And that was sort of the first time we actually did a business plan for it.

And we kind of realized we didn't have any money. That old chestnut. Yeah. So then I was at the same time working at VV Patissie in Mt. Arthur as a barista. And I just happened to sort of be chatting with like some guys on you and they're like, Oh, do you want to do your own business? And I'm like, well actually as a matter of fact I do. And so after that was my mate Duncan. And yeah, after chatting to him you know, and him sort of saying, yeah, I'd love to back you. I told

him about like the idea of Sarah and you know, doing that and he was really keen and we did a business plan together and then again we realized we didn't have enough money. And so he actually knew a couple of other guys, one of whom was obsessed with coffee roasting and sort of going for a similar journey in a way to me that I'd never met. And the other one who was sort of, you know, maybe keen to get on board, you know, some young people and invest in that. And yeah, one thing led to the other and I think from then it just became a few steps of like, okay, so let's incorporate a business.

Let's set up a trust. Let's start looking for a location. Let's develop a more, you know, rigorous business plan and then kind of fast forward, it would have been sort of two years later, we actually found 16 Progress Street. And then, I mean, it was too late once we signed a lease and just had to do it. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So how important for you was those, having those people behind you and those people kind of supporting you in what was your passion and what you wanted to do? For me, I think keen.

So I'm the kind of guy who, I can do things by myself. I don't struggle to work alone but my best work is done when I can bounce off other people. And having Sarah was great because that really, it got me excited, you know, about what we were doing. And then when I found other guys who, so shout outs, I should say to Duncan, Benny and Andrew, it would be nothing without you guys. But when they kind of got on board, it was great to have structure and all of those guys in their own right have been successful in life and great business people and kind of have different elements of sort of that they could contribute.

If not, you know, like me with my coffee, you know, it was them with their other skills. And I think together what we managed to do was create something way bigger than my vision. It was something that was sort of more, you know, like all encompassing where we were not just, you know, roasting coffee, but we had a commercial roaster. We weren't just, you know, serving coffee. We had a whole warehouse to do it in. And, you know, like, and I think just in terms of like, actually practically fitting out the shop, like we all just did it.

Like, you know, I had friends and family, but obviously in particular, those guys, like just in there with hammers and nails and totally legitimate sparking and timing and stuff. No, seriously, it's all fun. We've been through exactly the same thing. Just get all the boys and girls who are good at what they do and let them work. And it's, how long has it been now? 2013, was it? Almost five years. Almost five years. That's insane. It is insane. It freaks me out. Yeah. It's super cool because, you know, from like my point of view as a customer, initially, like, we first started talking about having a gym in Mornington in like 2014.

And then we didn't move in or find our spot until later 2015. We're almost at our second birthday actually. But we kind of gravitated towards Golden Folk, like, right from the start. As soon as we moved into where we were, we spent most days or- Well, I remember. Before we sent interns in the morning to Golden Folk. Yeah, and it's just different. And I think that warehouse kind of feel, but it's a very homely feel. And it's that community vibe. And we were talking about before, like it was just, everything was buzzing. Everyone just wanted to be there.

Everyone was happy. And why did you decide on the warehouse rather than somewhere on Main Street like you were wanting to do? At first, it was probably a necessity. So we were looking for a place, not on Main Street, but just off. But nowhere was big enough within our price range. In fact, to be honest, even the small places weren't within our price range. I mean- It's more expensive down there for something a little bit- It's crazy, yeah. So we just like, we almost gave up on Mornington. Really? Yeah, because we just didn't, we didn't think.

And then, like we'd been chatting with Matty from the brewery. And those guys are like the legends and really inspirational to us as I think they are a lot of businesses. And we kind of flagged the idea of doing a warehouse because we probably had, I guess, precedence from a planning point of view to do it because primarily we wanted to wholesale and roast coffee. And so then when Sarah actually found Burger Street, she drove past and she's like, "This factory looks cool." That's so cool how that happens. I went and checked it out and I'm like, "Oh man, this is cool.

This is like a great facade." And then we walked in and had the courtyard out the back and we're like, "Oh, this is pretty easy to drive." And yeah, it just made sense. When we found it, all of us went and had a look at it and we're like, "Yeah, this feels right." And nothing had felt right before that. Like I get that, we had that same feeling. We tried to lock one in and it fell through and ended up seeing that and we're like, "This is perfect." And you just know, it's one of those

things I'm sure it was, and I'll ask you the story about it in a second, but I'm sure it was like that was when you locked in the place and locked in the business name and all that kind of stuff. You just know. Yeah. And it's funny how, because I'm a fairly pragmatic person, fairly pragmatic. I'm also idealistic, but it's funny that I was led by emotion then. I mean, the price was right and everything, that's fine. But actually in the end, I looked at it and it felt right. But I think you've got to be that to a point.

And I think that there's something, maybe we'll touch on it later too, but there's something human about that. I think we probably discredit how much we're led by our emotions, but also how well that serves us sometimes. From a biological point of view, that's actually, there's probably something there. I've got this thing that I struggle with that I think if you follow your gut and do the right thing, things will always work out well in the end. Like I hate the saying things happen for a reason, but they kind of do. I've been following the podcast, mate, we're going to win you over.

There's some reasons. My head goes around in this circle all the time. But yeah, we'll get to that a little bit later on. How did you think of the name Common Folk or where'd that come from? We had a, so, and I'll shout out to Sarah again because she's incredible inspirational like for a lot of things. But also our mate Andy Murray who helped us with the design initially. Not a tennis player? Oh, every LZ open, he pretends he's a tennis player and does a running commentary of sort of his experience at the Australian Open. But no, not a tennis player.

He's, I think, oh, I would have been probably wrong. Apologies Andy if you listen to this, but you're like the 09 young Victorian designer of the year. He's a phenomenal guy. He's a great artist. But I was sitting around a table in my house thinking of names because by this stage we're like Foxtrotts and Rubbers. He couldn't put the video on with the Foxtrotter around for hours on end. No, no. So we wanted to encapsulate a few things. Yeah. Part of it was the idea that we're welcoming and it's for everybody because we realized that

like, you know, that whole sort of at the time, you know, maybe specialty coffee and roasting coffee was a bit hipster, a little bit unattainable. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't for everybody. But I was like, you know what, firstly, it's not going to work on a peninsula because people have never had this before. Secondly, that's not me. Like I don't want to not serve, you know, some trading hive as a coffee because, you know, because he didn't pronounce it correctly. I want to give him a coffee anyway. I want to be a dickhead. So that was sort of like the Colin part of it.

But then just like, just calling something Colin would be like, it's just common. I remember it was about the people. And so we're going through different words with people and everything. And I think we actually came up with common folk early on. And just for whatever reason, we just brushed it aside and then later we're going back over what we've done and we saw him like, wait a second. That's the one. Common folk. That's it. A hundred percent it. That's really cool. And yeah, it's thanks to those two who were probably more creative than me. I think like it's just the perfect name.

Yeah. It's spot on because it encapsulates everything you guys are about. And that exact community that you've built over the last almost five years. It's yeah, it's pretty incredible. And it's also been a part of it. So from the wider Mornington community and people that have visited common folk, thank you. Oh my pleasure. It's awesome. So why did you get into like, I guess, wholesaling roasting coffee rather than just being a cafe? It was, it was about sharing it with other people. So one of my thoughts, and it's probably more of a businessy thought, like, you know, I think Ben, one of my partners might have raised it.

He's like, well, why would we just roast coffee for ourselves? Is anyone else doing it like this? And I'm like, well, not really in the peninsula. So I'm like, well, we should share it. You know, we should grow the business, like, you know, with wholesale as well so that more people can have good coffee. Yeah. And so that probably led us to thinking about that as a strategic thing. But also, I mean, I mean, part of it is, it's another avenue for revenue. So, what is it, diversifying? Diversification, yeah. Well, it's probably pretty important, I guess, what's integral to what you guys do and like, probably building that brand so quick.

Yeah. Being able to be seen as the guys, like, sending coffee all over the shop. How many places do you send them to? We've got about 30 accounts. Yeah. But I'd say probably like 10 key accounts. Our initial aim was, we said we wanted to get, serve, come and vote coffee in the best cafe in every suburb on the peninsula. So we didn't want to overdo it. But, you know, if there was a postcode, we're happy to have a cafe there. We wanted them to be like, really passionate and really great. And I think like, we've just about sort of done that, in a way.

And I think now it's about, you know, like, bringing more people into sort of the family who share that value in those philosophies. Yeah, that's really cool. What was the growth like in the first 12 months? Because I guess I was, I probably didn't enter come and vote until the 20, started 2015. So those first two years, what was the life? Well, it's actually funny. So and this is where like, from a business point of view, I learned the most lessons. So I thought that for the cafe would be quiet because of where it was. Yeah.

And the roasting would go off because it was so new. It was quite novel and a lot of businesses would be keen to take it up. Yeah. We found that a lot of, and it makes sense now, having run my own hospitality business, a lot of businesses were apprehensive about getting into bed with these young, hipstery, you know, whippersnappers who were telling them that their coffee was shit and they should use ours. And I mean, that's not the words we used, but you know, that was the vibe they got. Yeah. And so wholesale was a slow burn.

But the cafe went nuts. Like the first day we opened, I remember an old customer of mine who ended up becoming one of the head baristas at some stage, Jack O'Keefe, came in at, I think we opened at like eight or something. And he came in at eight on the dot and he got the first coffee and I'm like, ah, this feels good. I made a coffee, someone's handed over money for it. And I reckon half an hour later we were full. And I, but like we had, my wife was working. No, it was supposed to be a soft opening because like a whole village that helped us build this thing.

Everyone knew. Everyone came down and I'm like, it was insane. That's amazing. Which was like, it was good. Like, because obviously from then we were like, okay, this will work, but it was scary because we weren't prepared for it. So we did a lot of catching up in the first year from a cafe point of view. Yeah, that's super cool. When did it start to go, well, this is pumping, we're doing really well at this. When did you start thinking about other things? I actually say this, I share this with a lot of people who say buying a cafe or starting a new venture or something like that.

And I always tell them like, after six months, you like, you'll, you'll want to die and you'll hate it. And you'll be like, I can't do this. This is the worst decision I've ever made. Everything is terrible. I've been in that stage. And then after 12 months, yeah, after 12 months, you'll be like, nah, I can do this. This will work. Yeah. And then I reckon to a, to a, to like a dime, it works every time. And it was for us at six months, I thought, what have I done? I can't see how I can deal with this.

I can't see how I'm going to grow into this. It's, it's overwhelming. I don't know how to deal with all this stuff. You know, I thought I was a pretty capable person, but now all my weaknesses are out there on display. And luckily, because I had a great wife, you know, really supportive business partners and a community who wanted us to succeed. You know, like you were kind of riding on shoulders of giants and probably at about, yeah, about 12 months, I reckon that's when I'm like, nah, I feel like I know what this looks like now.

And now I can start thinking about strategy beyond just staying alive, you know, staying afloat. It's, it's an interesting and like, I guess I've been through the same thing going from that mindset of holy shit, are we going to be open next month to, to what's next? And when everything starts to roll, you start feeling, oh shit, this is, this is, what were the things that you did or what were the support networks you used to get you through those, those times, those shitty times? I'm just trying to think of the, of the really practical sort of advice I could, I could share that worked for me, I reckon.

Personally, it was just knowing that, that failure, although it was a possibility, you know, like if, if, you know, things kind of went that way was, was not the end of the world. I remember we just need to do our best and we need to get this going. And that probably came from like my wife and my business partners. So that gave me a bit of security. And it's probably the start of, you know, when I started being able to give zero fucks about things I couldn't control. Which I think is really important too is being able to let go of stuff that's, that you can't control.

And sort of my philosophy now would be like, I don't want to jump on mistakes, be it my own or be it my employees. But instead I want to think about what my responsibilities are and what I can influence and start focusing on those. So that it's, it's, it's looking to the future. It's living in the now and it's learning from the past, which is so obvious, but you just, people don't do that. They don't. I reckon they just don't. And that's something that I have to learn, you know, to let go of stuff that didn't work and to, to, you know, let myself be supported by the people who really get it.

Practical, like, advice that everyone says, but it works. And that's perspective, I reckon. So if there was one key thing that I think, like, kind of got me through that was being able to take a step back, really look at it for what it was and go from there. And, you know, and figure out what advice was good and what advice was misinformed. Which is hard to say, cause like I could be saying this now and maybe someone listening is like, yeah, but there are heaps of people offering me advice and something that's contradictory. That's tough.

Yeah. Which would you suggest that those people just go with their gut and just follow their gut. And so I think if it's your idea and if you really believe in it, although it's, you know, it'd be unwise to not let yourself like learn from something. I think in the end, if it's 50/50, you got to go, yeah, go with your gut because at least then even if it doesn't work, you, you can own it rather than resenting the person who's, and you don't want to bring other people in that stuff, you know. Yeah. And at the end of the day, the buck stops with you.

But the way I can look at it is if it's something you're passionate about, if it's something that you love doing, you're going to put every ounce of energy you've got into it and it's going to like, it's going to succeed in one way or another, you'll get to where you want to get to. And even if it fails, you'll learn, you'll pick yourself up, dust yourself off and you'll keep carrying on. And I think that's, that's where just playing that long game and putting that those hours on hours really, really makes a difference. How many subs you guys have now?

Actually, I can tell you, 51. 51? But, but, but, but. It sounds, it sounds insane. And like, you know, that would make us one of the biggest employers on the peninsula, blah, blah, blah. We're not. It's a lot of those people between, because we have two venues, some of them are crossovers. And most of them are casuals. A lot of students who might work one, maybe two shifts a week. But we do have a core team of at least 30 people, which is crazy. I, it's crazy. I don't know how to respond to that. Yeah, that's, that's just amazing.

Like, we'll, we'll hit 13 in November. And for me, like, that's mind-blowing. I started off with just two of us and now it's 13. It's, yeah, it's, it's crazy when you think, shit, I'm responsible for all those people. Like, there's people who own houses and cars and stuff that like, can't pay for that stuff. I just, I don't think about it. I just think about doing my best. Yeah, because it's pretty, yeah, it's a bit intimidating. Thanks for reminding me. It's alright. You mentioned your second site. When did that happen? So our second site, Merchant of Maggot, which is, it probably happened about the same time you guys opened up.

Which actually probably, like, is I don't reckon I met you from a personal point of view until like, probably six months in. Yeah, not properly. Yeah, because like, my good crew kind of looking up to Coen Folk for me, we're all focusing on that. And it was very much a, hey, we're like a big family and I feel like, you know, we want to grow and, and I feel like we've got some other things we can explore. So Coen Folk, for anybody who doesn't know, is pretty rustic. It's, it's very handmade and we love it. And it's a great place for roasting coffee, catching up, there's a lot of space.

But we thought that we could also do a good job of something a bit more refined, something a bit more contemporary. Yeah, pushing those things that you actually love. And table service, that kind of thing. And so that's sort of where Merchant of Maggot came from. And we found a great location. And once again, I mean, it was it was a much easier sort of process, I think, than Coen Folk, because we knew what we were doing. Not to say it was simple, but, but yeah, we probably set that up in, you know, probably three months, I think it took us.

Yeah, and opened up and, and yeah, had the staff, you know, training at Coen Folk and a great team ready to go and yeah. Well, that's probably a bonus for it you had, yeah, you already had, I guess, Plan A worked and ticked off. And now we go for number two, where you can really utilise that momentum. Did it help significantly having Coen Folk already? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, even I was even thinking about even if we let's say we've done what a lot of people in Australia do, we'd sold say, business A, so we could set up business B, which is slightly more what we wanted to do.

That would have been tough too, because we trained and also got a lot of staff in earlier than you probably would be able to do if you were just setting up your own place. So I think when we launched Merchant, we had a clear understanding of what we wanted to achieve. And you know, things don't go to plan like we had, you know, a number of hiccups along the way, but we always had that security knowing that worst case scenario, we got Coen Folk backing us up. Yeah, which definitely helped. Yeah, that's super cool. What do you think has been able to drive the culture between the two businesses?

Since the start? We share the same manifesto. Yeah, so we have a manifesto, which is kind of funny. But it's really cool. And it has a number of values, you know, including accessible excellence was one of them, which was like in the Coen Folk. Great word. You know, creative spaces, we wanted to be a place that you could excel in whatever you're doing and be an innovator in everything. Well, I think one of them was actually sort of a sacred space, a third space people, our customers and our staff would rather be but wasn't home or work or for our students like study.

And we sort of we shared those common values and we wanted to promote basically a family rather than just a business because I've worked in so many hospitality businesses, some of which I've mentioned, and all of them were great for different reasons. But I think none of them were really You were able to pick the best thing from each one that was lacking you like, this is what we want to do. And mostly they were just places of employment. And I'm a passionate person. I don't just go I don't like a lot of people like, oh, do you live to work or do you work to live?

And I'm like, I can't answer that question. Because you're implying that like, the answer has to be one of them all that somehow work or living is one is better than the other. I love what I do. So I'm sure I live to work. But like, but like, but also I'm working and living like, I don't know, what are you asking me? Yeah, I love that. I love the way you look at that. Because like, I find the same thing like, why don't you have a day off? I love coming to work, like, works. We need another word for work.

Like, yeah, this is what I do. And like, you're building something that's bigger than you. You've got this whole community of people that are behind you and wanting you to succeed because they love what you're doing. And I think that's, that's, that's pretty amazing. And it's, it's really cool you kind of said that because I asked a bunch of your staff and ex staff for a bunch of questions. And one of the questions was... Thanks Jack Jeffrey. Jack Jeffrey, this is his question. Why or how have you been able to, what's your mindset around creating

Common Folk and you've been able to create a platform for, I guess, entrepreneurship and empowerment for your staff to go and do their own thing or really kind of take off and follow their passion? And I think that's amazing from a business where a lot of businesses would just go, no, you're working for me for the rest of your life. But you're like, you want them to succeed. This is, this is my pragmatic thing. And this is, this is, this is hard to do because it's, and maybe our initial success has helped because, although, no, look, I don't think it has because like I was stressed out of my mind for money and stuff.

You know, it's really tempting to try and hold onto what's yours really tight and not let anyone else get it. And in particular in hospitality, that's your staff. And Ryan, who's my headrest, shout out to Ryan and myself discussed very early on that our passion was to make ourselves dispensable. That was the first thing we wanted to do. We didn't want to have to be there because that's what we saw a lot of businesses similar to what we were doing to do. And it just makes your life terrible. But also we wanted to embrace the people that we could get.

We wanted people who are passionate and invested when they were with us, but understanding that, like, it's just statistical. 50% of the hospitality workforce are students who are studying to do what they want to do and what they love. And I remember working for some people who like someone finished their uni degree, got a job as a physio or something. And then the boss was like, oh, you can't leave me. Are you kidding me? Like that's what they were looking for. Obviously, they're going to leave. So for me, I just tell my staff, even when I'm hiring them, we don't want you if you don't want us.

And more to the point, if the passion runs dry, talk to me about it. And if it's something that we're doing, nobody can work on it. If it's something else, like, I'll bless you and go out and succeed. Like, I mean, I've got one of our favourite all-time employees, Casey Holmes. You probably remember her. Amazing barista. Couldn't pour a coffee in for her life when she started, but it's just naturally talented. We shared a similar value in the sense that we just wanted the team to grow and to get better. And she got to a point where actually she was so good.

I couldn't give her what probably she was capable of doing. And so she left to go onward and upward to be head barista elsewhere. And she killed it. Now she's managing like an amazing cafe. And it's something that like four years ago, if I'd said that to her, she'd be like, what's a latte? She'd be like, I don't know what a latte is. You've been able to provide that for her and that's pretty amazing. And so like I said, it's the pragmatic thing where it's going to hurt me too much if I think I own or have any entitlement to my staff.

So I tell them, as long as the next step is a good one, I'm happy to support it. So there have been a couple of times where we've probably lost people for reasons that I thought were bad, like as in a bad decision on their part. And I've shared it with them as best I can. In the end, you know, I can't be responsible for the decisions you make. But I'd say largely, you know, like 90% of the people leaving us for whatever reason is to go on to bigger and better things. And the best thing is like, I think of even staff that were friction moved.

There's very few people who wouldn't probably still call me a friend or speak fondly about common folk. And that's pretty amazing. And it wasn't as in like, that wasn't the reason I acted the way I acted. But I think that's the sense of... That's a byproduct of you doing what you've done. Yeah, I love that. What are the best parts of what you do? Coffee. I love coffee, like if you haven't figured it out. I love drinking coffee. I love getting new coffees in. I love talking about coffee. Other than that, I think seeing people do well is exciting.

It's also sort of the most crushing thing though, too. Say someone who I think has a lot of potential, sort of lets themselves down. But I remember as well that life is a whole series of lessons. Like I'm not going to give up on someone because they stuff up with common folk. I love that. But yeah, I can probably seeing as well the community and the customers. Like we've got some regulars who you'd probably be familiar with who are like, common folk is their bread and butter. If they can't go there and feel the community, it would be really tough for them.

Which is humbling to know that you're beyond a ritual. You're actually like, you're home for a lot of people who you didn't ask to be part of the family you just hoped they wanted to be. I think that's pretty amazing. Our crew spent a lot of time at Virtus. And apart from that, we're at home. But then the third place, like you said, it generally is common folk. It's because of that, and I'm a big believer that the culture is driven by the leaders and the people that are in charge. So bravo to you. You've grown that and perpetuated that because that's what you want.

And all of the staff now, they're not the baristas or the people that service our coffee. They're good friends now because we've been able to get to know them and spend time with them and talk to them. And I think that's credit to you because it's a pretty amazing place to be, even on the shitty days. And even when I've had some crap days at Virtus, I know that I can roll next street over to common folk and have ten people ask me how I'm going. Yeah. And you say he comes over and says something inappropriate and grabs you.

Exactly. And he's like, oh, Bertie comes up and asks me to go to Mr. Banks for a few proffees. For 500 times. Yeah, exactly. He asks me if I want to play golf in half an hour. I'm like, mate, I've got to work, but I appreciate you asking. Next door, you've got the nook and the snakehole. When did that happen? And this is a crazy story. How did that happen? Do tell me things don't happen for a reason. And I want to not believe that, but I can't. So the day that I was looking at common folk, the day the real estate agent took us to the factory, I rolled up the back roller door into our courtyard.

And at exactly the same time, the roller door next door to where the now snakehole is, was being rolled up. And it was Josh Brown. What a man. Now this book, it gets great. So Josh and your men went to high school with each other. Oh, did ya? And then he moved in the same year level. We grew up with each other, basically. There you go. And he moved up to Bondi and was working for Insight. Yeah. And I heard on the grapevine he was coming back. And it just so happened that the day he

was checking out the back of his dad's factory to see if he could have studio there was the exact same day we were checking out. And the only day we checked out the future. And it's not only the same day, the same time. And he's like, what are you guys doing here? And I'm like, oh, what are you doing here? You know, like we talked about what we were doing and he's like, yeah, that's awesome, man. How good's that? I was thinking of doing studio here. I can see Brown saying exactly that in that voice, in that level of excitement.

And it was just, it was, it was really weird. And I think at the time, obviously neither of us really knew what it would have meant for not just like us, but also the, you know, industrial estate in Mornington in general. But yeah, it was, it was pretty, nice little piece of serendipity there. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's crazy because it just works perfectly. Like having a space like the Nook that pushed the same kind of creativity and growth and community as you guys do. And then having your courtyard out in the back leading straight into the snake hole, like crazy.

Yeah, it's, yeah, that shit doesn't have a bias to it, but it's, it's pretty amazing. If you could nail down the two biggest challenges in the last five years, what would they be? In a business that's heavily reliant on new people, because I noticed that people like a hospitality is easy. I'm like, are you kidding me? It's manufacturing and like retail at the same time, but like on the spot, as in like you manufacture what you're retailing when people order it. And I think people don't realize how complicated those processes and systems need to be. And then not only that, you're asking, largely a bunch of untrained sort of 18 year olds to do most of it.

So it's no surprise. I think that the staffing is really hard. We, and I just want to shout out to all our staff too, because maybe if I'm lucky, some of them want to hear what I'm saying. But we're, we are really lucky common folk and it's probably not luck as well. It's the culture we've kind of got, but we get to attract the best. I think usually compared to a lot of businesses, we don't struggle for resumes. And we like to invest in our people and people. So we get, we get like the pick of the bunch and the ones that stick around and like, they're there for a reason.

They're really good. And I think they know that too, but it's nice to hear it. But he's just there hanging on. I don't know if he has a job or he has a title, but he doesn't actually do any work. I sent him a message and I told him to come over for a basketball text photo. He's like, yeah, no worries. I'm not working. The nicest human in the world. I can't say bad things about him for too long. I mean, you know, he's somehow he's been eating like five or six burgers a day and he's lost five kilos.

That's what he tells me. Yeah. He's going to be skinny fat when he gets fat. We'll deal with that. As long as I can beat him on the rowing machine. Yeah, we'll see how we go. But yeah, so probably staffing would be one. And it's a real practical one. But like I said, it's, it'll always be hard because it never resolves. Everyone wants something different all the time and everyone's there for a different reason. It's a matter of putting in all of that channeling it towards what you want as well, which is tough. Yeah. Number two, I don't know.

I'm really curious. I don't know if I've written anything about that. I wrote notes because I was really scared about it. That is not notes mate. That is an essay. I like to be, okay. And that's probably, you know, the second hardest thing would be retraining the things I'm bad in because I'm bad at certain things. When I was younger, I could wing most stuff. I was pretty quick on my feet in terms of like exams. I didn't really study. I just did them. But you can't do that. You can't do that employing like X many people.

So probably, yeah, things like this, like, you know, learning to use my calendar and my notes and stuff and communication and now you talk to like Shannon or Rooney or Ryan or any of the main guys. And I'll tell you that communication is still like something I could, you know, work on. But yeah, probably that. I think I've always been disciplined, but more disciplined in things I want to do. But I definitely, I think I've overcome, you know, not doing stuff I didn't like. Is that all through self-reflection or is that all through listening to your staff and listening to the people that are telling you that you should be better?

It's a combo. It's a combo attack. Yeah. So I bought meetings. It's funny. We kind of chuckle at the fact we go on board meetings. It's just a bunch of, you know, me and my partner's getting together and talking about stuff. But I guess that's a board meeting. It's about work. It's not a question. But having those guys ask me the right questions and then letting me largely come to the conclusions that they already had for myself, which is a really great way to teach people because everyone loves coming out with the solution themselves, even if someone else clearly gave it to them.

And then also, yeah, listening to my staff, especially the ones that I respected or knew were heavily invested, you know, had a good perspective. Yeah. So I think yeah. That's probably important because then they've come from a place where they're separate from the business. They've come in and they've thought, well, this could be better or this could be changed or we could do this differently. Yeah. And it kind of gives you a new, I guess, outlook on everything, which is really easy in your echo chamber. And I'm sure you go through the same things I do is you get stuck in thinking the same way.

Yeah. And you get someone new in and they throw a new idea at you. You're like, oh, that's a great idea. Let's do that. And I think it takes that kind of ego hit to a point to be able to listen to them and actually take their ideas on board as much as you can. If you rewind a couple of years, five years, if you're about to start the business again, but you had all the knowledge you have now, what would the two pieces of advice you give yourself be? It would be to really get shit done when you have the opportunity to do it.

And this is why maybe we could learn quicker was to go with the money. And that sounds really funny. That was a rhyme. Wow. I did not intend that. We thought customers would want a certain thing, but they wanted something slightly different, which was more food to make a call on that earlier to invest into the future. The obvious one would be build a bigger kitchen and have better infrastructure. But there's no way we could have known that. And secondly, we wouldn't have enough money to do it. But it would be to be comfortable with being flexible because as long as our manifesto was adhered to our core values, the things that made Commonwealth Folk were the starting point.

It didn't matter what we did from then. And I think that there was a fear that we had to do exactly what we were supposed to do. And what we were supposed to do is actually just shit we've been thinking about, but it actually wasn't specifically what Commonwealth Folk should do. Yeah. And then you change and adapt and actually utilize those things you want to do, but in a different way. Because you learn. Everything changes. Yeah. That's super cool. I don't know. I'd say number two. Yeah, number two. It's always number two that's hard. Actually, no, it would be to start getting zero fucks sooner.

I don't know if the guys, I have a reputation for, I guess, being calm in the face of a shitstorm. And it's something that I had to learn. It's not apathy because I'm focusing on the problem and I want to look for a solution. So you're zoning in on that thing. But it's realizing that once something's happened, being stressed about it, you can't change that. And it's easier said than done. I know there's a lot of people, like anxiety is a real, and then leading on to depression stuff is crippling a lot of people. So they have age and young.

Definitely. And I'm so aware of it. And I've suffered through my own battles with stress and focusing on the wrong things and letting stuff overwhelm you. But there's stuff you can practice, like mindfulness and perspective that can kind of reset. That's my word of the month. My words, perspective and mindfulness, I think as soon as you allow yourself to spend time regenerating and getting yourself back up and about and having that perspective to realize that, yeah, I've got all this shit going on, but everyone's got shit going on. And there's so many people that have shit going on, it's worse for me.

It helps allow that kind of peacefulness for me and stops me from worrying about not being big enough or busy enough, not having enough people in there. And yeah, I think that's really, really important. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] But look, maybe at some point, I'm sure at some point, maybe it would be a thing that would happen, but it's certainly not in the plans. I'd have to overcome a number of emotional burdens. [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, we do have the old common focus on the arm. So yeah, it's something I could never imagine doing. I guess with Virtus, but I guess as a cafe, it's probably something that's probably more, I don't know, not necessarily emotionally, but more easily sold.

Yeah, probably. Yeah, I guess. But especially if you've got a team of people who are doing it, it's separate to you anymore, which Confo can basically operate without me there now. Yeah, that's super cool. That's my next job, mate. But hey, it took me four and a half years before I could go on a holiday for more than two years. Oh, there you go. I've got two and a half years to go. Sorry about that. You're not going away. How do I know you are going away? South America. Six weeks to South America, but I've got an amazing team and I know that they'll not only look after Jim all the way but continue to grow.

I'll keep an eye on that. Yeah, you're in charge actually. All right. Actually, I might put you in charge. You train three times a week at different times just to make sure everything's doing okay. I'll throw up. Shit. Tell me about sailing. Whose idea was Bussy McBusface? Because that was something that, like someone said, we're getting a bus and then next minute there's a bus out in the front with Bussy McBusface on the front. So please tell me that story. All right. One of our business partners have joined a little bit later, Troy. He's possibly my favorite human.

If he listens to this podcast, I'm going to be tickled pink. Send him the link over and over again. Have you listened yet? He was working for a business that was liquidating some of their assets and they had these buses. And he was just like, do you want to buy a bus? And I'm like, I don't want to say no because that's not going to come up. So we just collectively, it was a really good price. So we felt the risk wasn't too great. Even if we didn't do anything with it, we could probably sell it, the same, if not a bit more.

So we bought it and I talked to Ryan Tolman as a project guy as well. So he loves to be doing something. Shout out to Tolman. Damn, I wish I remembered what his real estate photography company was called, but if you need to take a photo of your property with a drone, Ryan Tolman's the guy. But he was keen to fit it out. And he really helped with both comic book and merchant. And so he basically put his hand up. He had the same reaction to you when I said, "Oh, we're buying a bus." He's like, "What?"

But then when he saw it, he's like, "No, we can work with this." And so we basically fitted it out. I came up with the name Bussing McBuss Face because it was a shout out to Boney McBoat Face, which I thought was great. And I was only appeased when they didn't call it Boney McBoat Face because they called it Sir David Attenborough. So they named it after my hero. Well, that's fair. That's fair. So I was comfortable with that. And yeah, we took our time to do a good job of it. We'd seen all of the people who'd sort of had mobile coffee solutions that had worked with us.

We saw some of the issues that they'd had and tried to create something that didn't have any of those. And we knew we weren't going to be able to run it ourselves effectively. We could, but we wouldn't really do it justice. And so we decided to sell it too. And we found a young guy who'd sort of come from a career in IT who wanted to get into food, JP. And we met him and I was so nervous that whoever was going to buy it was going to be maybe a bit of a dickhead or not really know what they were doing.

And I'd be like, "Oh, I'm going to sell it to you." But we just clicked straight away. That's a legend. Already part of the family. He's only had it for like a couple of months now and he's killing them. So yeah, it was really good. And like, he's just doing so much more than what we would have done with it because he's got the time. Well, it's his and he can take it, take it where he wants it. And that all happened in like a year, like from like getting it. I think we got it this time last year.

It's out there serving coffee. And it was awesome because you kind of just enlisted the community to get it done. Like with the Snakehole Boys doing the artwork. Yeah, yeah. No, no. And Lockie from Burst, shout out. He does all our signage. That's a free vinyl sticker there, I think. Yeah, yeah. I want some more stickers, Lock. I did actually need a, I hit him up for some signage last week, so I need a kit. And it's a nice Voyager shirt you're wearing too. Yeah. It's not actually a Voyager shirt. No, it actually is. Oh, it is?

Oh, it is. And yours is too. You don't mind Voyager. Yeah. On that note, there's a kookaburra to pronounce that correctly. How'd that start and what is it? Great. All right. Great segue, by the way. That was, that was, that was good. We planned that, didn't we? We did not. So a kookaburra is a coffee co-op, I guess, or a collective. It's located in Bali in Uganda. But we probably need to rewind like, yeah, well, four and a half years to think about, or even longer, five years to think about why it exists. So myself and my business partners are all, as are Christians, like Tommy T was saying in his podcast.

And I think that, although myself, I'm probably don't feel endeared to the church or the traditional sort of structure, that kind of stuff. I mean, like, like obviously I'm a scientist as well. So I kind of, there's, there's a, like the traditional church probably conflicts with some of my beliefs, but we all shared a common view that we wanted to give back to, I guess, to, to people. We wanted to do the work that sort of, that Jesus demonstrated when he was on earth. And that was, there's a lot of that was looking after the oppressed, you know, like, you know, helping those who show how themselves and the widows and all things, et cetera.

And I mean, I think as well, like, I think that's a natural human thing to want to do, aside from that. But we were invested in it and we just didn't know what to do. So I said to the guy as well, you know, maybe we, we look to the most vulnerable people who we, who are our neighbors. And I saw my neighbors as being anyone that we impact day to day. And the obvious one is, was like coffee farmers. And my partner, Andy Gail, had been over to Uganda and, and had a connection with a lot of, like sort of an NGO over there that was, that was focusing on sort of community, community development, et cetera.

And he was like, oh, did they grow coffee in Uganda? And I'm like, I never had Ugandan coffee. But I looked into it and where Mbali was and Mount Algon, which is where the coffee is grown, is right on the border of Kenya in like prime coffee growing country. And I was like, alright, now I'm getting a bit excited. Now, now, now, because at the time I was like, oh yeah, that may or may not come to something. Maybe just donate to another charity that exists. And, and he actually talked to his friends from the community development team and they said, oh, we've got a coffee project that we want to do.

We just haven't financed it. And we're like, how much money do you need? And they said, oh, we need something like, I think $20,000 to do the, the, the basics to set up a demonstration farm and build the infrastructure to process coffee and train the farmers because they're already growing coffee, just bad coffee. Or not great coffee, I should say. And, and we're like, okay, well, we'll commit 10% of our profits to you guys. And so that was probably decided maybe a few months before we opened. When we opened the first week, I wasn't using accounting software well.

I'm sure money was coming in, but I had no idea how much I was really spending. We don't do that now. But at the time I was like, oh, I don't know what 10% of profits is. Like, are we making profits? What's going on? And so I was like, we were really keen to still give because we felt that it was part of the common folk thing. Yeah. So we actually decided to scrap the profits thing because it doesn't make sense. You know, we're not sure, you know, it's gonna be really complicated. We may never make profits.

Do we not want to donate? So we decided to commit 20 cents from every coffee we sell. And from day one, every, yeah, every coffee that the common folk has sold has gone to the cup of accounts, which is the funding charity for Zucucabora. Well, I feel personally responsible for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Well, actually though, yes. And that's the cool thing is that everyone who has been there from the start or jumped in halfway and been there most days for coffee has contributed, which is the cool thing. I mean, this is the crazy thing.

And I think I think you came to the launch. I won the beer pong tournament against Jack Jeffrey, who hates it when I wear that shirt. So I won that shirt. You deserve it. Yeah. So with Longy, of course, was the tourist. We beat Jackson, Jack and Dan. So eat a baggie too. But yeah, keep talking. Tell us the story because it was an amazing night for someone that understood what the cup of accounts was, but didn't really see the impact. I mean, it's hard for me to, I've been over to Uganda two times now. Three times, two times.

And not enough. I'd love to go more. I told Tommy I want to go with him. You should. I'm not even kidding. We can talk about that later. But yeah, it's the great people. But it took years to sort of obviously fund the program enough for it to actually consider producing commercial harbors, which was the key. It was the idea that these farmers who have been producing coffee and selling it to sort of faceless corporations, could produce it to a higher quality and sell it direct to a roastery like ourselves. They just needed investment. And

we managed to, the people of Mornington, or not just Mornington, but like who buy, have ever bought a Confo coffee, or a merchant to make a coffee, have contributed, I think today, like over well over $100,000. That's amazing. The impact is crazy. So like $100 in Australia, it's a lot of money, but it's not going to get that far. Maybe you could set up a cafe or something with it. But in Africa, that has built a processing plant. It's bought trucks, motorbikes, it's paid wages. It's bought like equipment for coffee. It's paid for importing. It's invested in training and community.

It's bought like tens of thousands of coffee seedlings. It's insane. And more to the point, we haven't even sent all of it over yet because we wait for them to, like they get funds for specific things. Like there's still more money in the kitty ready to go. And yet they're going to produce, so last year when they produced their first harvest, we purchased all of it. It was about four tons of coffee. This year, they're going to produce over 10. That's awesome. And that, to translate that into sort of layman's terms as to how many people are impacted by that, with four tons of coffee, that was 20,000 people were in some way better off.

So if you think about that for 10, over 10 tons, that's, what's that 50,000? That's lots of thousands. Like that's half the population of the peninsula. Yeah. Simply because people are choosing to have a coffee of common folk rather than 7-11 or whatever. Yeah, that's incredible. And no credit to the common folk guys, like in terms of we didn't do it. We had great people who we could invest in as well. I think it's an accumulative effort, which is the most, I think that's probably the coolest thing about it. It's not just one guy going, you know what, I'm going to do this.

It's an idea that's turned into helping a shitload of people, which is awesome because it's actually making a difference. Yeah, it's amazing. And you're actually giving back, yeah. Yeah. That's super, super cool. Yeah. All right, let's talk about your religion and your faith. Awesome. So I think, and with you, I'm going to enjoy this because you obviously come from the scientific background, or you dove into the scientific stuff with uni, and that's kind of the mindset that I come with. But obviously you're a raised Christian. Yep. Yep. So how did that affect the way you grew up?

It was once again, I had a great childhood. And I think that like, when you're a kid, you don't know whether yours is good or bad. Yeah. Mostly it's good because you're a kid and things are fun. I mean, I know something horrible childhood. Yeah. But my parents are really good. My dad's a really quiet man, but really wise. And I think, you know, I was a loud kind of crazy kid, but dad always told me how to keep the footy and we spent a lot of quality to go fishing with me spent a lot of quality time with him.

And that was him showing me love and I think reflecting his faith, you know, his faith is practical. And it was about being what he felt like, you know, God was to him to his family. I mean, he worked in the same job for over 40 years, like every day, like for us. Yeah. Like, like, you know, never complaining. And that's, I think about me working, you know, it's like, Oh, gee, they got a long way to go. You know, you love what you're doing every day. Yeah. And then mom was, you know, a bit more, Oh, she was super pragmatic too, but she was a bit more vocal and, and she was really big on justice.

So it's funny because like a lot of people think Christian and I think, you know, kind of conservative liberal family first voters. Yeah. She should be voting greens, except that they're not progressive enough. And so she was very much on, she got what we paid for her to go to uni. So she's always loved sort of social sciences and that kind of thing. And she was very big on justice and on helping people. And we always have like a kid staying at our house whose parents weren't looking after him or whatever, or, you know, doing

a bread run for, you know, from babies to like to give to the, and so I think I saw faith lived out in a way that's not reflected, I think in the media and in society, I didn't get the negative stuff. I only saw the good stuff. Cause I think my parents were really great examples of it. And so when I kind of got a bit older as like a teenager and started becoming an adult and realized that a lot of people resented organized religion, it surprised me. But then I felt a lot of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the wrong word.

I didn't get annoyed at that because I realized that like, I mean, it's, I don't get upset with ignorant people cause like, like you don't get upset with a kid cause you can't do mathematics. You're like, Oh, let's teach you mathematics. I get more upset if someone was like yelling at the kid for not knowing. And so it's people who lumbar us to like criticize, say, religious people or people who don't share a progressive opinion, you know, like they're idiots. And I'm like, well, they're probably not. It's just that no one's ever, they don't, they're not in, they're in an echo chamber where they've never heard an alternative.

And I think religion and faith can be super good, super valuable, but it's obviously, it can be channeled really poorly as well. Just like almost anything. I think it's a human issue, not so much an issue with religion itself. Yeah. Well, I think it's, it's, people just like assume that this one group or this one person that's throwing all this hate or anti whatever, and it is religion, but like religion is just an overarching term for people believing things. So I think when you, when you take the good with the bad, like you should with

everything in life, and you actually go, well, everyone, I'm a big believer that 90% of people just want the world to be a better place and want to help and want to assist and want to be happy and healthy and all these kinds of things. So I think when you take a step back, take a big deep breath, which needs to happen, which needs to happen a little bit more often, and you have that perspective that everyone's just trying to do their best, then like things like religion and things like that don't, aren't a negative thing.

And I think there, they can be a negative thing that can perpetuate into a negative view and result in the way that people are treated and I guess bastardized, but for the most part, people just want to be good. For sure. Yeah. And I think that's really important. Well, it's interesting cause like, I reckon, and this was, I've read a book called Sapiens, which is basically, it's, it's, it's just looking at the, the history of sort of mankind from, from, I guess, ape through to where we are now. And I should say too, like, I mean, I'm a progressive man of faith.

Like I studied evolution, I believe in it. I don't think that it contradicts the Bible of those things don't need to link in for me. I think that, which is, which is like, obviously not comfortable for a lot of people, religious people that aren't like that. And that's fine. But that's good because you've adapted in your life and you've grown through that understanding of religion, but not necessarily lost what you believe, like lost your beliefs and lost your faith. Interestingly too though, I think, like, I don't think you need, I don't think you need to be like, if someone wants to believe that God created the world in six days, like I'm actually cool with that.

Cause I don't think that that translates into them being different to people. Usually. They're not necessarily a bad person. It depends how they perpetuate that belief. So I probably wouldn't have that argument unless someone wanted to, you know what I mean? Cause I study is good, but it's more like I'm in this book and actually it's sort of eloquently put a thought that I had for a long time, like in terms that I was like, that's, that's what I've been thinking. And it's, a lot of people sort of talk about, you know, this obsession with spiritual sort of metaphysical things that humans appear to have as a negative, like it's holding us back.

Like it's the thing that, you know, that is the biggest weakness of humans, this, this desire to sort of understand, you know, is there to be obsessed with religion, like as a God and, you know, the meaning, et cetera. But I reckon it's the thing that separates us from every other animal. It's why we're successful. Because like no one, no other animal believes, you know, in God. Only humans, at least not that we know of. And actually I think, I mean, and, and this was something I learned from a book that I think humans don't

have the ability to, to organize and positively kind of interact with any more than I think it was like 200 other beings, anything bigger than that. Except that we hold ideas, which are the idea of God, the idea of, I mean, like a corporation, a business is nothing. It's a piece of paper that we signed saying it's now a business, but it's basically common values that let more than 200 people interact with each other with a common goal and achieve great things. And every great success humanity has had from the beginning of like sort of historical documentation has been because of our inherent nature to be able to collectively join together and go for a common goal.

And that's the whole belief in God thing. And a lot of people go, oh, so that means that you, you actually accept that God's fake and it's an evolutionary tactic. Well, for me, I'm kind of like, you know, I don't, I mean, you can look at it on the other side. I believe if we were created in the image of God, even if that was through a series of, you know, scientific sort of event, evolutionary events, whatever, I don't care. It would make sense that we have that desire and it separates us from other animals. And it also, I think if you understand it, it can be a really positive thing.

It can be a great way to understand why humans can achieve the things they do, but also a really good warning for us to not say, throw the baby out of the bath water, which is get rid of religion because if we're all atheists and we're pragmatic, we'd achieve things, you know, way more easily. Everything would be better. I'm saying no, because then you're ignoring your biology. We, our DNA is set up so that we interact with culture in a certain way. And if we ignore the fact that humans aren't pragmatic and that we actually have an inherent need to have an ideal that we can collectively work towards, you're not going to see less wars.

You're not going to see, you know, like us achieve greater things and fly to Mars and create, you know, like teleportation. You're not going to see those things if we can't work together. And the fact that we can work together means we need to share common ideals. Now, maybe you could replace religion with other things, but you can't replace it with nothing. No, I 100% agree. I think we're in a really, really interesting point in history being like 2017, everyone's trying to progress forward and we've got that kind of, that religious, that religious kind of being as a whole hanger with some of us as we try and move forward.

And I think we're part of our society is just going, nah, fuck that off, let's move on. But part of our society is saying, well, no, there's a lot of good with the companies. Why did that happen in the first place? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think, well, I think it happened in the first place because our need to and this is me speaking out of my depth, but it's, it's our need to know and to understand and to, to be aware of what's going on and why it's happening and things like that. And that's just human nature is we want to understand and we want to know, we want to know why things happen.

And I think the manifestation of religion and God and a higher power has just come from us wanting to understand why things happen. And now that we're at a stage where science and technology is getting to a point where we can actually start to unravel some of those mysteries, it allows us to move forward and develop. And I think we, like I said, if we throw the baby out of the bath water and just fuck religion off altogether, we're left with a bunch of people believing nothing. And, you know, atheism for me isn't believing nothing.

It's believing that where, I don't know, for me, it's, we're so insignificant in the whole spectrum of things that, that what I do doesn't really matter, but what we do as a collective is going to help the collective move forward. It's funny because I reckon like it's, it's hilarious, actually makes perfect sense that we probably share a similar view, but obviously, but mine is backed with like a belief that, you know, that there's sort of a creator and yours is probably more, or I don't know about that. But I think it's because we're both asking the question why things happen and not just doing things.

And not all humans do that and potentially not all humans are supposed to, but like you said, sort of it's like, but collectively, if you're kind of sharing a goal, which is something outside of your own consciousness, it's something you share with other people, we achieve these great things. And it's, and it's by just doing small things yourself and everyone else doing small things that you build an empire. Yeah. All those things, all those things add up. Like one of my really, really simple things I think is actually an intro to this podcast is just, if we do really, really simple little things a little bit better, everything gets better.

And like, that's the whole reason, like you asked me the question before why I started the podcast. The whole reason is just to find little parts or little ways of improvement through understanding and experiences. Because I think so many people try and move forward without actually experiencing things. And I think the best way to figure out what you're good at or what you love doing is to do shit you don't like. Because as soon as that, you're like, "Oh, fuck, this is what I want to do." Or, "I hate this, don't hit me." I wrote something down about this.

I haven't actually referred to my notes as the first thing. It's literally what I've said. I reckon the reason people don't achieve what they want to achieve is because they're thinking either too far in advance or they're crippled with fear because of things I've done. And it's like you just said, it's doing small things and getting a little bit better every day. I was just saying I try and draw inspiration and value from the mundane things that I have to do because they're 99% of existing. And so many other people are waiting for the 1% of crazy event that's life-changing to happen for them to change.

And if you do that, only 1% of your life is going to ever mean anything to you. But when you think about it like what you're saying, but actually in a way everything's meaningless. That 1% that you think is life-changing is meaningless anyway. You've got to get the most out of what you've got. Exactly. And I think too many people kind of chase that, "Well, one day something magical will happen" or chase that thing or that success that they want rather than actually focusing on them today. Like I didn't just open conference. You didn't just walk up to your factory, roll up the door and there's like 13 staff members at the gym.

And people like it's actually, in a way it's easier than it seems and harder than it seems. I wrote an Instagram post the other day and I'm going to write it out purely because I preach is a bad choice of words, but I throw things out on social media and things because it's something that I'm struggling with or dealing with at that time. So one of the things I wrote the other day was for me, life is a terrifying, magical, formidable, exciting dance between being present, enjoying today and pursuing growth, success and planning for that future that never actually arrives.

One of my biggest realisations lately has been the importance of mindfulness and perspective. Being mindful is allowing yourself to stop, breathe and smile and enjoy all that has happened and all that is happening. Don't get washed along with your own expectations and dreams without allowing yourself to enjoy the journey along the way. And one of my favourite Alan Watts quotes is, "You can't live at all unless you can live fully now." For me, everyone's chasing that thing along the horizon. It's like chasing a rainbow, you're never actually going to get there and you're never actually going to reach it.

So you are perpetually left in a state of wanting more. I had a three month patch of work after my business partner who I started with, Jesse, left 12 months ago. Really amazing learning experience for me as a person and I grew a lot in that time. We just moved out of home and all these things happened at once. And I did a really cool five, six month patch where I just nose in the trough, smash work. I did stupid days like 6am to 10, 11pm, back up six the next morning and repeat. And I had this point in the middle where I was like, I'm not getting anywhere.

I want to do all this and we're not there yet. And I think our physio, Greg, who's an amazing human said to me, he's like, I don't even know how he knew, but I must have just been really flustered one day. He sent me a message and said, take a big deep breath, smile and realise how far you've come. And that was kind of like the catalyst to kind of allow myself to go, well, yeah, I want all these things, but shit, we've done a good job so far. And yeah, I love what I do every day.

And I'm like, I'm sure you've probably had the same thing with common folk where some days you're just like, we're not getting there. We're not moving fast enough. We're not progressing enough. But at the same time, you look back and you see all these people that have been affected by what you've created. And it's a positive thing. Yeah. And I reckon, and that might be a sign of sort of that, like, you know, people like us, whatever we are. Like, it's not that you're never satisfied, but you always like to be, you know, improving. But

then, but I like one lesson that my business partners probably push on the artists is to like, you know, like, have a look at what we've achieved as well. Like, you know, like, it's good to take time to sort of reflect and go, yeah, this is good. This is good work, you know, and you know, like, and enjoy that. And yeah, it's not easy to do. Especially when you know, like, because you've still got your list of stuff you want to do. Exactly. And like, we've got, we've got gym rules, right? One of our gym rules, rule five, and I'll say rule five for a lot of people and I understand what it means.

It's leave your ego on the hook. And I think when you can take, put that ego on the hook and take a step back and go, this is awesome. We've actually achieved something. It's when you can start to grow and like, it doesn't have to be someone like you or someone like me who run a business. It can be someone who's in high school and you know what, last year we were in year nine, this year we were in year 10 and we're moving forward and progressing. Or you know, a uni student who's gone, I don't know what I want to do.

And they've spent the first two years of uni going from, I don't know what I want to do to, Hey, I really enjoy this. Like enjoying those little steps and that little bit of progress is so important because that allows you to actually, I guess, draw inspiration from what you're doing to help you get to where you want to get to. Yeah. Yeah. And I like the idea if it's not, yeah, it doesn't just have to be the people in charge too. I think one thing that always I come back to is that like everyone seems to think, and I think society says you got to be the boss, you know, you've got to be in charge.

Like that's the goal. And I think it's reflected in almost everybody. You've got to end up winning. And apparently winning means, I don't know, like, I guess having power or whatever, but I don't think everyone, I don't think that's something to strive for. No, but I think you've got to figure out like what you're winning, what you're winning is. Everyone's winning is different. Like Charlie Sheen's winning is cocaine and hookers. Your winning is coffee and community. Like everyone's got, what an example, but everyone's got a different. It could be some cocaine. Everyone's got their own variation of winning.

And I think that's really, really important to like, it's one of those sayings that's kind of been thrown around a little bit lately, but you do you. Yeah. Don't try and get someone else's trophy. Yeah. Because like, there's a trophy for everyone, you know, what is it? You've got to find out what it is. Unless it's a participation trophy, then yeah. But maybe that's what, you know, just being there to be with people, you know, and that's winning. You shouldn't get a trophy for participation. That's a whole other podcast. All right, so I'm going to tweak the conversation a little bit.

Let's go, let's change it. You're an Uber driver. Yes. That's amazing. I only found that out this morning. Talk to me through that experience. I've been talking to you people. Yeah. Or you've been drunk, you've been going to a main street one. Yeah. Unfortunately that never happens. So I've got to credit Andy Gull, my business partner for this one. So he started driving Uber just for a bit extra cash. Because he's a personal trainer as well. Okay. And he just, because no one's training at 2am. And he was like, do it man, do it. Because if you, you know, I'll get bonus money if you like sign up.

So that's not going to happen. It was probably more, the thought was, I don't go to sleep before sort of 1am any night. It's not a bad thing. I just don't sleep. That's just you. That's just me. And I, and some of you, yeah, raise the lives of my wife at 10pm is a late night for them. Yeah. And so I'm like, what can I do in those three hours other than just like sitting on my phone, I don't know, doing whatever. And so I figured like, I don't always do it. In fact, but I was just the idea.

If I look up, if I'm up for it, I'd go out and just, I don't know, not just make some money. Like it's sort of irrelevant. It was more just, you know, getting to meet some people and doing something different. Something that's keeping my mind in the game. And, and yeah, like I, it's enjoyable and kind of like almost just the humor of it was enough. Like it was amusing to me that I was driving people around like, it's just fun. What did you learn from it? That like a lot of chefs smoke weed. Because they're up so late.

50% of the people I was taking home were like stone chefs. But on the flip side, I'd say that like this, everyone's weird, you know, like, and all you need to do is give people like a little bit of an opening and they're happy to talk to you about pretty much anything. Yeah. And there's not that many Uber drivers in Mornington. Because I'd much rather be home on the couch with KP than out in Mornington. But on the odd occasion happens. There's not all that many people to come. I'm just gonna call you now. Yeah. You still live it over?

No, but get in. Or chuck it on the tab. That's one of the worst decisions I've ever made. Because that's just loaded up. You're probably at your limit now. Like five or six trainings a week. Yeah, we have to train like twice a day to look over that tab. For those that don't know what we're talking about, we are doing a trade for trade for food and coffee for training, which is probably the best, best thing ever. Oh yeah, because I'm fat and walking is hungry. Correct. And in need of coffee. So to finish this off, I've got a bunch of questions for you.

I just want you to answer them as simply or as in depth as you want. What is your philosophy? Oh, wow. Damn it. I was supposed to... Okay. Well hit whatever you've got in your notes. I thought I'd find a romance to this one. What was I? A romance to which bands I like. I like this. You did some research. My philosophy. Tommy's one's good. He improves a little bit every day. But like realistically, I was to think about it would be to learn to love simplicity and hard work, but embrace complexity and fucking around. Fuck, I love that so much.

Someone put that on a t-shirt. Voyager, James, if you're listening, please put that on a t-shirt. Second one, what are you grateful for? People who give me the time of day. But also look, for my faith, for my life, we're lucky just sitting in this office. And so like I try to... Yeah, it's Rhys Johnson for the... For the... Greatly electrician, if anybody's an electrician on the peninsula. Look, I'm probably... It's funny. I'm not a... I don't seem grateful. Like sometimes I think I don't verbalize it because like probably similar to Tommy, I'm always trying to improve.

So if I dwell on the good things that I have, I feel like I might get anywhere. But I've had so many people who have stopped and looked at me and taken the time to just give a little bit of whatever it is they have to give. And that's amazing. And yeah, just life. I think life is a pretty precious gift. You get one, maybe if you're a Buddhist, you get like a few, but maybe only one is a human. I don't know. You don't want to waste it and it's good. Yeah. I love that. What is success to you?

Actually, here we go. So Caleb's dad, Ponzi's dad, he's a pastor, he's a wise man. He was talking about contentment the other day. I listen to him talk about contentment. And I think a lot of people think that that's like the opposite of what like say someone like myself or you was trying to do. We're driven by going to the next level. But I think the contentment is really important. So that's the whole living in the moment thing. So I think success for me would be having enough perspective to be content with where I'm at, but not to let it stop me from where I'm going.

That perfect balance between sort of chaos and peace, you know, like just striving straight ahead. There's gonna be a whole range of t-shirts printed out in this book. If you could give teenage Sammy one piece of advice, what would it be? The getting perspective certainly would be nice. But this is a pet peeve of mine now. Like, I don't know if you've ever read like an assignment you do when you're in school, or like a letter you wrote to Future Lucky or something. And it's usually cringe-worthy to the max and you're like, "Oh man, I was such a weirdo."

And I was a massive weirdo. Which we love. Yeah. We love that. But I think about it this way, and it's the whole not regretting your past or letting it dwell on too much. Everything that I did and everyone I met and every single, you know, instance that occurred pre this moment now, it's like got me here. Yeah. And I don't mind here, like this struggles and things, but I think giving out, dishing out advice, I don't know what that would do. Like if I told myself all these great things, these words of knowledge, would I even believe it?

Like, you know, there's people who were saying this shit, you know, there's nothing wrong with some. You know, I could have got any of the stuff I've learned from someone else, you know, millenians ago, but instead I decided to do what I did. So maybe I just wouldn't even talk to teenage now. I love that. I love that. I think Laura gave a very similar answer a couple years ago. Like it was, it was around the fact that, well, yeah, I'd like to know, but at the same time, every, like who I am now is because I've experienced all those things.

So I think that's a great answer. What is the nicest thing you've ever done for someone? You'd have to ask them. Give me a great answer. Good. Oh, good. You don't have to continue. Give me a copy every day for the last two and a half years. What was the last book you read? Well, I read Red Sapiens. And what did you learn from it? Oh, humans are amazing. But also, I think that we're not self-aware, as well, not as self-aware as we think we are. I've been reading snippets of the Bible. I always do. It's funny because like I go through periods where I'm like, I heard this story before.

And then there's other times I'm like, geez, that's actually, I get what that might be referring to. But I'm not, but probably, like I was talking about you, probably podcasts are really, I'm really enjoying those. I love, I struggle to stop and to take a step back and do stuff. So I listen to junk. Because I know that I need to do that. So I don't want to say, Jack's really mean if I reference any of the podcasts. But my mate, Chris Miller, he's called Footy Biff. It's a podcast. And he basically just talks with a couple of his mates about footy.

And he's like the most one eye original supporter ever. Every podcast is about Dustin Martin. But I just listen to it because I'm like, that's my mate talking on a podcast. That's cool. If you could have dinner with three people, dead or alive, who would they be and why? Attenborough, JC, Jesus Christ. Oh, and the third one, I don't know. This could be a bit lame, but I really, my business partner, Troy, he's a very inspirational man. And I struggle to like tell people, you know, how impressed I am with him. So, you know, if he does listen to it, I love to have dinner with him.

I get a lot from him, but Jesus. Why those three? Why David? David Umbridge is obviously my hero. And I think, yeah, amazing human. Yeah. And you know, like he's like, he's getting, I've seen him live twice because he came and did an interview. Ray Martin interviewed him and I was thinking, Oh no, is it going to be like terrible? But it was, Ray Martin did a great job. It was amazing. Jesus, because like, I mean, like there's a million different questions you could ask. Is it, is it Jesus as a person or is it the idea of Jesus?

Because that's... Yeah, good question. Yeah. I mean, I can't speak Hebrew, so Jesus as a person might be challenging. Although if he's the son of God, I'm sure that he can like flip out the translator and just, but probably a bit of both. Yeah. So the, you know, the Jesus, the personal Jesus, the one that, you know, Christians would say they don't have, but realistically we all do, because everything's filtered through, you know, your own experience. But then also the person would be great, you know, to fix, to, to, to rip down any sort of misconceptions they might have.

Yeah. You know. And what, what would the first, what would the main question you ask Troy? Troy? Oh, I've asked him it before and he always gives good answers. Just how do you do it? He juggles. So what does he do? So, so Troy is actually the CEO of, of the main establishment group, which is George Colombo's restaurants. And they've got a few of them and it's, and you know, they're a massive company and, and, you know, like I think, you know, going through obviously like, you know, different stuff at the moment with everything in the media, but Troy, I just think he's done an amazing job.

He's inspirational to me because of how he manages to, to deal with stuff. Yeah. And just the way he balances family life and, and putting things first, like his wife and his kids. And, and, and he's a peacemaker. He said that to me before. And I, and I want to be like that because, you know, like for me being like critical, wanting to try and get better, you can sometimes, you know, you can like, you know, you can be too abrasive. You can scrape off your skin when you're just trying to train yourself. And I want to learn how to, you know, appreciate different people for who they are.

And I think he does a really good job of that. So there you go, Troy. If you do listen to this. On that note, Troy, obviously being one of them, who are your biggest influences? Well, yeah, Troy, definitely my other business partners, Duncan Brown, Ben Hogan, Andrew Dowell, all of them. Like if, I mean, Duncan is such a, a go-getter, a pioneer. He gets him started. Benny, like, he's like, I just can't believe I'm going to get to work with him. I could, I'm not going to talk about him. I'd probably get a bit emotional.

And Dally, Dally's just like the godfather of common focus, comes in and has some chips and soup and dishes out and zingers because he's got plenty of them. Other than those guys, little guy, it's funny. You know, people are supposed to have influences like that's my hero. Like, I don't know if it's my hero, but like his influence is now limited on my day to day. I think I just draw inspiration from people I work with. Like, you know, Tommy T. inspires me to be better. Ryan inspires me to, you know, to think more deeply about things.

Like Rooney inspires me to work hard. She's amazing. Incredible. Like, my wife inspires me to like be nice to people. Awesome. So yeah, I like that. And I think it's like, you want to look, I guess, as far as you can to find those influences. But most of the time, those influences are the people that you surround yourself with, Dally. I think that's really important. If you could be remembered in one sentence, what would it be? I don't have any one sentence jokes, so I guess I'll text him. Think about it. Do it seriously. Be real, mate.

But I'd like, I'd like people to remember me as someone who gave more than they took, but not, not like maybe in the sense that like, you know, people gained more from knowing me than they lost, you know, in whatever way that kind of materialises. I like it. I like it. What's the best Robusta you've ever tasted? I've never had one I enjoyed. Really? No. There you go. Caught that. No, one of our old, the guys who used to work with Convo, Kane Blaber, was a big fan of Queen of the Nile. It's a Ugandan Robusta.

He was supposed to be the best Robusta in the world. Yeah, didn't like it. He was shit. Sorry, Kane. Yeah, that's what I did. It's bad. Can you dunk your six foot a lot? Why not? This video of me, this is a video of me almost dunking. Almost. Yeah, I can chuck the ball up and grab the ring, flick it down. It sounds like a dunk. I'll pay that. But no, I cannot dunk like once or twice in my life. In fact, here's a challenge for you. Like, if you can get me to dunk, that would be, that would be up there.

I'm getting pretty old, mate. The Achilles and the other. Yeah, look, look, I like to think I'm relatively good at what I do. I don't know if we tick that box, but hey, we'll see what we, we see what we can come up with. Hey, and just to flip it, you know, I like to ask Tommy T. Can he dunk? He's six foot something. Yeah, he could barely jump over a jam jar, so I'm not worried. Alright, last one. A couple of questions, a couple of favourites for you, sorry. I'm just going to throw one thing.

First thing comes into your head. As you open your notes, I hope you read them. Favourite hobby? Fishing. Good. Favourite resource for new information? Like, honestly, Google. Perfect. Everyone keeps giving that answer, I'm going to have to change that question. Favourite recording artist? Suffering Stevens. Oh, it's great. Favourite movie? Don't have one. Favourite band? The Block Party, Radiohead. Last one. Favourite quote? Oh, I've got a favourite quote. Hit me. If someone corrects you and you get offended, you have an ego problem. Yeah, I like that. It's really good. Awesome. Love your work, mate. Thank you very much for coming on.

Did we get the record? Did we get the record? I don't know. Well, technically, we're at an hour and 40. So we did get the record. No, unless you've got hard work. When you count the 10 minutes that we didn't record. But last week, which will be up last week for those that are listening now, was me. It was Pulsing, It's Really Me, which was two podcasts. We did an hour and 50 minutes, an hour and 20 or something. No, I'm comfortable with that because you're way more interesting than me. Not true, not true. Mate, thank you very much for coming on.

Is there any more you'd like to throw out to the world, to the universe? No. Mate, cheers to you. Hey, legends. Thank you very much for listening. I hope you got a lot out of it. If you haven't been to Common Folk Coffee, you need to get around it. It's on Progress Street in Mornington, just off Mornington Tire Road, the next street over from Virtus Performance. If you enjoyed it, please rate and review, say very nice things about us, even if you don't believe in them. If you didn't enjoy it, then please share and subscribe and say very nice things about it because that helps us get around and get to people that will actually enjoy it.

So thank you very much for listening. I hope you have a wonderful day. Be amazing.