The Secret To Success

There are no secrets to success, not anymore. If you want information, you have it. If you want to figure something out, you can.

Want to tell better stories? There are workshops available to you 24/7. Trying to dial in your P&L? There are thousands of YouTube videos pointing you in the right direction. There’s no shortage of people willing to share their hard-earned skills with you. A lot of times for free! We can learn from the best anytime, anywhere, for next to nothing.

Access to knowledge is not what’s keeping your business from being where it wants to be.

Skills are the easy part.

The hard part is feeling like you’re alone.
The hard part is continually giving but never having your own cup filled.
The hard part is pushing forward when everything feels like it's about to fall apart.
The fear that comes with taking the next step knowing it might not work.
The weight of going to bed with every night feeling like it’s all on you. Your head hits the pillow—instant anxiety. Everything you could've and should’ve done comes to visit you like the ghost of Christmas past.

What’s really hard, is knowing that you’re making a difference.

The people we look up to don’t help either. How can we feel like we’re winning when our Instagram has 1,000 followers and the girl we’re learning from has 2 million? Floating in a sea of what looks like people crushing it, it’s easy to feel small.

Sometimes looking at someone else's story can help us understand ours.

We have a friend, Benjamin Paz. Benjamin grew up in Honduras. His dad ran the coffee mill in El Cedral, a small community on Santa Barbara mountain. Coffee farmers from around the region would harvest their coffee and bring it to the mill to have it processed. For coffee we call commodity or C market, you kind of just get paid what you get paid. Drop the coffee off at the mill, the mill pays you, the mill sells the coffee to an importer and the cycle continues, harvest after harvest, year after year.

As Benjamin got older and became more involved in the business, he noticed an opportunity. He saw that some people in his region were producing coffee that was well above par—too good to be sold at C market prices. He also saw that people producing average coffee could improve their quality and raise their income if someone helped them understand what buyers on the other end of the supply chain were looking for.

Benjamin runs the mill now and while they still move plenty of commodity-grade coffee, he’s found a calling working with the farmers in his region, helping them improve their quality and connecting them with buyers on the other side of the supply chain.

He’s not particularly popular in the large scheme of things—unless you work this super niche slice of the specialty coffee community, you have no idea that he exists, but in his community, he’s a living legend because of what he continually does for the people around him. Show up in service, and make things better.

It’s not all fun and games, he still has to run the business. But his contribution matters deeply, and the ripple effect extends far beyond his community. Because of the work he does, we get to experience these unique and amazing coffees, thousands of miles away. But even more than that, we’re inspired by his generosity and his vision!

Benjamin’s story helps us understand our opportunity.

We’re not in business to be the biggest in the world. We’re not in business to be the richest in the world. As I’m sure many of you have discovered: there are easier ways to make money than running an independent business.

We’re here to connect.
To create experiences.
To teach.
To inspire.

Each interaction we have is an opportunity to bring a bit of joy into someone's day. Joy that they can take with them, and pass on to the people they interact with. You can’t use up joy, the more you share it, the more it grows—it’s renewable energy. The joy you create with one short interaction can provide fuel for multiple people’s entire day.

This is a gift. A gift that can be received by anyone who interacts with your business.

Ever had a terrible experience at a retail store that left you thinking: “Fuck it. It’s not worth it I’m just going to get everything from Amazon.” You’re in a position to make sure no one ever has an experience like that at your store.

Ever had a terrible job where no one cared about you or saw the potential in you? You’re in a position to make sure that doesn’t happen at your organization.

Ever taken the lazy route of complaining about young people’s work ethic instead of having the courage to challenge them to live up to their full potential? You get where I’m going here.

Just like Benjamin, we can choose to show up in service and change the world for the people around us. This is no small thing.

Maybe we get famous. Probably not.
Maybe we get rich. Probably not.
But we definitely make a difference. We have the power to help people feel more like themselves.