Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 28 - The Grind and Gusto of a Coffee Entrepreneur's Tale

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Ep. 28 - The Grind and Gusto of a Coffee Entrepreneur's Tale · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:02
  Mark Zweig: All right, everybody.
• 0:05
  Mark Zweig: This is Mark Swig and we're back with another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 0:14
  Mark Zweig: I don't know why Eric and I do that.
• 0:19
  Eric Howerton: It's the norm, Everyone loves it.
• 0:20
  Eric Howerton: Everybody like calls in and says hey, can y'all do that 20 times on the show?
• 0:24
  Eric Howerton: Let's do it again, Just for the fun of it.
• 0:26
  Eric Howerton: You want to?
• 0:26
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, we're going to do a little about small business.
• 0:30
  Eric Howerton: I'll throw in the NAS for it.
• 0:33
  Amber Dietrich: It was a little sassier the second time.
• 0:36
  Mark Zweig: We got, excited, we got.
• 0:39
  Mark Zweig: I'm here with Eric Howard and a very special guest, amber Dietrich.
• 0:44
  Mark Zweig: Hello and hi, amber, and Amber is in the coffee business.
• 0:53
  Mark Zweig: She has a company called Confident Coffee and we were just laughing about how we're drinking something other than that.
• 1:00
  Mark Zweig: Here we are.
• 1:02
  Eric Howerton: I think we need to do a quick toast, because let's announce that, pamper, we're drinking bad K-cup decap coffee, decap coffee, not even the full octane coffee.
• 1:14
  Eric Howerton: Well, I mean earlier.
• 1:15
  Eric Howerton: Mark knows, amber, would you like a cup of decap coffee?
• 1:18
  Eric Howerton: And that squirrel is like what.
• 1:21
  Mark Zweig: Like why decap?
• 1:22
  Mark Zweig: It was like sacrilege.
• 1:24
  Amber Dietrich: And that is like is this like a really special decap, Like what?
• 1:27
  Mark Zweig: No, no, no, you can tell.
• 1:29
  Mark Zweig: It tastes like water.
• 1:30
  Mark Zweig: For God's sake, I'll call it swag coffee.
• 1:31
  Mark Zweig: Yeah it's, it's I, but I already had so much coffee today.
• 1:37
  Eric Howerton: I mean, I don't know about you too, but so you're on the decaf side now.
• 1:39
  Mark Zweig: Oh my God, yeah, I mean, I'm just like wired beyond belief.
• 1:43
  Mark Zweig: Last night I was awake, so much of the night Was crazy.
• 1:47
  Eric Howerton: Did you have coffee or caffeine late?
• 1:48
  Mark Zweig: at night.
• 1:48
  Mark Zweig: No, I'm just.
• 1:50
  Mark Zweig: That's why I absolutely don't need it, because I would have been awake even more, but my aura ring gave me a terrible report.
• 1:57
  Mark Zweig: I don't know if you guys have these.
• 1:58
  Mark Zweig: What aura ring this records?
• 2:01
  Eric Howerton: almost.
• 2:01
  Eric Howerton: Oh yeah, I don't have one of those because I don't want to see those types of things.
• 2:05
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, I don't get one Really, I think you'll get addicted to aura yes, or if you have like a whoop, watch like the whoops.
• 2:13
  Mark Zweig: I've got an Apple watch.
• 2:14
  Amber Dietrich: And then you start running your life by it.
• 2:16
  Amber Dietrich: Like everyone I know who has them.
• 2:17
  Amber Dietrich: They're like oh my gosh, my recovery is terrible.
• 2:21
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I know.
• 2:21
  Amber Dietrich: I got to do this.
• 2:22
  Amber Dietrich: I got to do this.
• 2:23
  Amber Dietrich: I got to get fed by 828.
• 2:25
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah.
• 2:27
  Mark Zweig: I like it when I'm laying in bed and it's like you're stand goal.
• 2:31
  Mark Zweig: What do you mean?
• 2:33
  Mark Zweig: I never crossed it.
• 2:34
  Mark Zweig: It's always asking me if I fell.
• 2:36
  Mark Zweig: Did you fall?
• 2:36
  Mark Zweig: I'm like, no, what is it?
• 2:38
  Mark Zweig: A message is to Sonia.
• 2:40
  Mark Zweig: You're wise, everybody you know Mark fell, mark fell.
• 2:42
  Eric Howerton: It's insane.
• 2:43
  Eric Howerton: Did you ever enter in your age?
• 2:44
  Eric Howerton: And that is that why I don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I'm sorry.
• 2:55
  Mark Zweig: It is pretty sad, but anyway.
• 2:57
  Mark Zweig: No, let's talk about Amber today.
• 3:00
  Mark Zweig: Amber, I've had Amber speak to my classes when I can get her.
• 3:08
  Mark Zweig: Most of the time she ignores me when I ask her.
• 3:12
  Amber Dietrich: She's very busy, but Amber she did, but last semester I was way over committed.
• 3:19
  Eric Howerton: I think actually there's a text message right now where I'm ignoring you on that.
• 3:22
  Eric Howerton: It's the same subject.
• 3:23
  Eric Howerton: It doesn't matter, is it?
• 3:23
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I had a response.
• 3:25
  Eric Howerton: You're right.
• 3:25
  Amber Dietrich: I did not ignore his wife Right.
• 3:28
  Mark Zweig: No, don't.
• 3:30
  Amber Dietrich: I was like, just will you tell him, mark, I can't do it this semester.
• 3:31
  Mark Zweig: They're friends.
• 3:32
  Amber Dietrich: I just didn't do it.
• 3:33
  Mark Zweig: That's a good way to do it.
• 3:34
  Mark Zweig: I like that, but but no, Amber.
• 3:37
  Mark Zweig: Amber has a very interesting story to tell.
• 3:40
  Mark Zweig: I met her originally when she and her husband bought a house that we had done through our other business.
• 3:48
  Mark Zweig: What year was that that you moved here to Fayetteville 2016.
• 3:51
  Mark Zweig: 2016 is when they came from via the DFW area, Although Amber did not grow up there.
• 4:00
  Mark Zweig: Tell us a little bit about yourself, Amber, and your story.
• 4:04
  Mark Zweig: Where did you grow up and what was your youth like?
• 4:08
  Amber Dietrich: So it was a very boring youth I am actually from a little village called Muir in the great state of Michigan Going to two teenagers and, uh, I know that's crazy, I know you know In a different time, yeah, but also I do feel like I have a very classic.
• 4:32
  Amber Dietrich: What are we?
• 4:33
  Amber Dietrich: We're Gen X.
• 4:35
  Mark Zweig: I don't know, very classic Gen X.
• 4:36
  Mark Zweig: You may be, I'm, I'm a baby boomer, unfortunately.
• 4:40
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah.
• 4:41
  Mark Zweig: I know I don't seem that old.
• 4:42
  Amber Dietrich: Amber, no, you don't.
• 4:43
  Mark Zweig: But I am.
• 4:44
  Amber Dietrich: You don't.
• 4:46
  Eric Howerton: Well, I mean his, his brain is asking if he's falling.
• 4:48
  Mark Zweig: You know you might be on the cusp.
• 4:50
  Mark Zweig: I'm well into the boomer years, yeah, but go on.
• 4:54
  Mark Zweig: So you're going to.
• 4:54
  Amber Dietrich: Jen Right.
• 4:55
  Mark Zweig: Gen X.
• 4:56
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, Gen X Muir, Michigan, population 700.
• 4:59
  Amber Dietrich: Wow.
• 5:01
  Amber Dietrich: Uh only person to even be raised in that town my age, um, so I really grew up with like 50 year olds predominantly.
• 5:09
  Amber Dietrich: Uh started working.
• 5:10
  Amber Dietrich: We had a little town restaurant and a post office and so I started as a dishwasher at 14.
• 5:16
  Amber Dietrich: Uh eventually was promoted to like Monday and Tuesday night waitress and uh found, I guess, like a calling in a certain way kind of but yeah, first generation to go to college out of my entire family.
• 5:32
  Amber Dietrich: Uh graduated, went to Central Michigan University in Michigan and then actually did enough taking jobs and working in Michigan but moved to Dallas, texas, in 2001 and studied uh you know, my master's degree down there at university of Dallas.
• 5:48
  Amber Dietrich: So really passionate.
• 5:50
  Amber Dietrich: Weirdly, not anything food or beverage related.
• 5:53
  Amber Dietrich: Like.
• 5:54
  Amber Dietrich: I studied logistics management you know, supply chains as a secondary and back then they weren't fields Like right, it was just like part of marketing or something.
• 6:04
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it was like a crazy idea.
• 6:05
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 6:07
  Amber Dietrich: And there were five colleges that were just in the first year of being accredited with this as a program and I signed up to be in marketing.
• 6:15
  Amber Dietrich: You know, I showed up and they were like you know, you're a girl, you should do marketing.
• 6:19
  Mark Zweig: And I was like, okay, that's sense sexist though, doesn't it.
• 6:22
  Amber Dietrich: It was sexist, but you know it was whatever the time.
• 6:24
  Amber Dietrich: So I signed up and they were like one of these requirements to this marketing degree is that you have to do logistics management.
• 6:31
  Amber Dietrich: Everybody has to do this.
• 6:32
  Mark Zweig: Right, it was just one class of the marketing curriculum.
• 6:35
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, Check the box right.
• 6:36
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 6:38
  Amber Dietrich: And so the lucky thing was that I did it first and not last, and I took a class, I had an excellent professor, and I knew immediately.
• 6:45
  Amber Dietrich: I was like no, this is what I want to do.
• 6:47
  Amber Dietrich: Like.
• 6:48
  Eric Howerton: I'm good.
• 6:48
  Eric Howerton: And what field?
• 6:49
  Eric Howerton: In the logistics?
• 6:51
  Eric Howerton: In logistics, yeah.
• 6:52
  Eric Howerton: I imagine that's highly applicable towards everything you've been doing too 100%.
• 6:56
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's got to make her like organize and just lend an approach to this.
• 7:01
  Amber Dietrich: What people people in it understand, but people who don't it is nonstop problem solving, and so you know, if your brain works towards that, you know I'm a problem solver to a fault.
• 7:12
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, you know, my friends are like listen, we just want to talk to you, we don't need you to fix anything, and so I'm like okay, I don't do that when somebody tries to tell me that it's like I don't do that, yeah, your response should be you need to find another damn friend then, because that ain't me.
• 7:32
  Eric Howerton: You obviously don't know me.
• 7:33
  Eric Howerton: You're not my friend anymore, you're Al.
• 7:36
  Amber Dietrich: I just sit there with the like, my coffee or cocktail, and I'm like uh-huh.
• 7:39
  Eric Howerton: Sure, I'm still judging, you, but yes, uh-huh.
• 7:42
  Mark Zweig: But you had a very interesting like corporate career before you got into your own thing, so tell us about that.
• 7:50
  Amber Dietrich: Okay, so started.
• 7:51
  Amber Dietrich: You know also this is important to the journey.
• 7:55
  Amber Dietrich: But my first job out of school was JB Hunt.
• 7:57
  Amber Dietrich: Okay, I graduated, I went to Detroit for a couple of months.
• 8:02
  Amber Dietrich: I was working at a Home Depot account at the time, running flatbeds and just kind of learning about trucking.
• 8:08
  Amber Dietrich: And I left to go to Misawakka, indiana, and we were doing JB Hunt had a startup account there with a business called Elro Steel and like two months out of graduating I was managing 11 truck drivers, flatbed accounts.
• 8:25
  Amber Dietrich: Like learning the steel industry, starting up a new business, working on site with a customer.
• 8:32
  Amber Dietrich: It was just like a lot of experience, a lot of learning, a lot of new things for somebody who was 23 at the time.
• 8:38
  Amber Dietrich: I was living on my own and kind of do my own thing and a startup to jump.
• 8:43
  Amber Dietrich: So I started there.
• 8:45
  Amber Dietrich: September 11th happened.
• 8:48
  Amber Dietrich: I was at that account and like the big thing, one of the big things that changed was just the domestic steel industry tanked.
• 8:55
  Amber Dietrich: Foreign steel was on the rise and JB Hunt ended up divesting that business.
• 9:00
  Amber Dietrich: So I moved back to the Detroit area and worked there for a little bit longer.
• 9:05
  Mark Zweig: Did you ever come to Northwest Arkansas then during that time?
• 9:08
  Amber Dietrich: No.
• 9:08
  Mark Zweig: It was so weird.
• 9:10
  Amber Dietrich: And it really is weird because within just a few years, maybe four years or less one of the requirements with JB Hunt you had to come here, like you stayed in Loll.
• 9:20
  Amber Dietrich: They would put you in trucks with drivers and you would actually be on the road.
• 9:25
  Amber Dietrich: So, in just a small amount of time they changed.
• 9:29
  Amber Dietrich: Like one of those requirements.
• 9:32
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, that's crazy.
• 9:33
  Mark Zweig: So, anyway, so you did that.
• 9:36
  Mark Zweig: And then what?
• 9:37
  Mark Zweig: I get rid of it.
• 9:39
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, went down to Dallas.
• 9:42
  Amber Dietrich: Texas, and there's a little blip of time where I thought I don't know, it is weird to be a logistics major and come out of Detroit and have all of these opportunities.
• 9:53
  Amber Dietrich: But I landed in Dallas, texas, where it was like a communication telecom bust and so it was like super horrible timing to get a job.
• 10:04
  Mark Zweig: And why'd you go to Dallas?
• 10:05
  Mark Zweig: Was that because of your husband?
• 10:07
  Amber Dietrich: Yes, because he worked for JB Hunt and at the time he was promoted.
• 10:12
  Amber Dietrich: We were dating.
• 10:13
  Amber Dietrich: We weren't married and I was like, if we're going to continue dating?
• 10:16
  Mark Zweig: Living in sin.
• 10:18
  Amber Dietrich: Well, we hadn't been until we got to Dallas, and then it was full living in sin.
• 10:23
  Eric Howerton: I mean, man, that's like.
• 10:24
  Eric Howerton: This goes against like two of our philosophies or rules of engagement.
• 10:30
  Eric Howerton: Oh sorry.
• 10:31
  Amber Dietrich: Well, at least he does love all at once.
• 10:33
  Mark Zweig: You know, yeah, thanks Amber.
• 10:35
  Eric Howerton: You're a defend me, you only do home runs, defend me.
• 10:38
  Mark Zweig: Only home runs, bro.
• 10:39
  Mark Zweig: Okay.
• 10:39
  Mark Zweig: So because of Bill, though, you went down there.
• 10:43
  Mark Zweig: So because of Bill, yeah, you got to Dallas.
• 10:46
  Mark Zweig: The telecom industry is collapsing.
• 10:48
  Amber Dietrich: I go down there, I think no big deal, I'm going to get a job immediately.
• 10:52
  Mark Zweig: Right, who wouldn't hire you?
• 10:54
  Mark Zweig: For God's sakes?
• 10:55
  Mark Zweig: It'd be crazy.
• 10:55
  Mark Zweig: Apparently a lot of people, it'd be crazy.
• 10:58
  Amber Dietrich: Apparently, many, many people will not hire me, okay.
• 11:03
  Mark Zweig: So then, what'd you do?
• 11:05
  Amber Dietrich: I immediately started bartending and waiting tables at the world famous Logan Roadhouse to make sure that I was keeping sharp on my skills.
• 11:17
  Mark Zweig: You didn't eat too many of those rolls, though, although they are good, that's questionable no but like I also am a hustler, so I was printing resumes.
• 11:30
  Amber Dietrich: I was this person.
• 11:30
  Amber Dietrich: I would go down to downtown Dallas, I would pick Thanksgiving Tower if you know what it is and I would have a stack of resumes and I would go to the 45th floor and knock on every door.
• 11:42
  Mark Zweig: Love, it and I would go down.
• 11:43
  Mark Zweig: This is why she's successful.
• 11:45
  Mark Zweig: Hell yeah, it is.
• 11:46
  Amber Dietrich: And every place, any place I open the door got an Amber Dietrich resume.
• 11:50
  Mark Zweig: Love it.
• 11:51
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like I need work, I'm looking for a job, I'm here, I obviously know where you are.
• 11:55
  Amber Dietrich: Let's do this.
• 11:58
  Eric Howerton: Can we make a global, universal world statement right now from that comment?
• 12:02
  Eric Howerton: Sure, that is what it freaking takes.
• 12:05
  Eric Howerton: I know, dang it, people have to understand.
• 12:08
  Eric Howerton: You got to dog it and you start, you start.
• 12:12
  Eric Howerton: You don't have to have anything, just start.
• 12:15
  Mark Zweig: She started at the top too.
• 12:16
  Mark Zweig: I mean, think about the symbolism in that she gets to the 45th floor.
• 12:20
  Mark Zweig: So what floor did you have to go to before you found a job?
• 12:24
  Amber Dietrich: Sorry, All 45 floors.
• 12:25
  Amber Dietrich: Ok, you know Love it.
• 12:27
  Amber Dietrich: But a guy did call and I was lucky I didn't end up taking this role.
• 12:31
  Amber Dietrich: But a guy called from me doing this and he's like I will pay you $45,000.
• 12:35
  Amber Dietrich: Start tomorrow.
• 12:36
  Amber Dietrich: It was an accounting rule and it was basically almost the accounts payable job you're talking about and he's like I need help.
• 12:44
  Amber Dietrich: So this is like Kismet, show up.
• 12:47
  Amber Dietrich: And just by chance I also got a call and it was JC Penney and they were like hey, we have a job, we're based in Dallas, aren't they?
• 12:56
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, they're based in Dallas, in Plano, texas, but they also have a distribution center down in Cedar Hill, and so they were like we'd love to talk to you immediately.
• 13:05
  Amber Dietrich: We have an immediate opening, come and talk to us.
• 13:08
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like I mean, this other job makes more sense than probably accounts payable jobs, sure.
• 13:14
  Mark Zweig: It's more aligned with your background and interests.
• 13:17
  Amber Dietrich: So really I ended up going down.
• 13:19
  Amber Dietrich: I talked to them and took a job and I ended up at JC Penney in the distribution center working there and it was a terrible job.
• 13:28
  Amber Dietrich: It was second shift, it wasn't anything of a.
• 13:32
  Amber Dietrich: I wasn't at headquarters.
• 13:33
  Amber Dietrich: I came in and it had been ran by a third party logistics company.
• 13:38
  Amber Dietrich: It was a bit in disarray Really good people working there, but not processes in any way.
• 13:46
  Amber Dietrich: I would go to work at five.
• 13:49
  Amber Dietrich: I would get out at three in the morning, Then I would drive from Cedar Hill back to debt.
• 13:55
  Mark Zweig: That's like 30 miles or so, isn't it 30?
• 13:58
  Amber Dietrich: or even 45 just in time.
• 14:00
  Amber Dietrich: And the bad thing is is like there's terrible traffic there Even though it's in the middle of the night.
• 14:04
  Amber Dietrich: It's so dangerous.
• 14:05
  Amber Dietrich: I saw so many really bad things in those hours.
• 14:09
  Amber Dietrich: Tell them about traffic accidents.
• 14:11
  Amber Dietrich: Accidents, I mean people dying.
• 14:16
  Mark Zweig: My first wife was a school psychologist in Duncanville.
• 14:19
  Mark Zweig: Oh, I was right next door Duncanville yeah, right next door.
• 14:22
  Mark Zweig: She drove that every day, but anyway.
• 14:24
  Eric Howerton: so that road was so busy, there was just constantly accidents.
• 14:28
  Amber Dietrich: A lot in the middle of the night and it's like we were staying in Addison.
• 14:31
  Amber Dietrich: So you're on a road that's you're driving and it's like a freeway, it's a tollway, but there's a lot of blind little hills and people are drinking and driving and just stuff was always happening.
• 14:43
  Amber Dietrich: And I'm always on the road at three in the morning, so it's just it was weird.
• 14:48
  Amber Dietrich: But I had a guy that I worked for there.
• 14:49
  Amber Dietrich: His name was Rich Wallace.
• 14:50
  Amber Dietrich: He was at corporate and he was one of those people.
• 14:55
  Amber Dietrich: So it's like you have key people in your life along the way that recognize something really good with you and take you under their wing and mentor you to help progress your career.
• 15:06
  Amber Dietrich: So it was like I did a lot of work when I was at JCPenney and I took on many departments and at some point from zero to two and a half years like one awards and management awards and efficiency awards and he would bring me up to corporate and let me work on these really big rollout projects for all 13 DCs across the nation.
• 15:26
  Amber Dietrich: So it was like he was really invited.
• 15:29
  Mark Zweig: Who was your advocate?
• 15:30
  Mark Zweig: He was yeah, he was your mentor.
• 15:31
  Mark Zweig: He was invited to the table Right.
• 15:33
  Mark Zweig: Sure, Quite a bit, yeah.
• 15:35
  Amber Dietrich: And then, out of the blue, I get a call and there's this little startup company called Amazon.
• 15:40
  Mark Zweig: Oh my.
• 15:41
  Amber Dietrich: And Amazon's like hey.
• 15:43
  Eric Howerton: What year is this?
• 15:45
  Amber Dietrich: 2005.
• 15:46
  Eric Howerton: Wow.
• 15:47
  Amber Dietrich: And they were like we're calling you, like we know of you from your time at JB Hunt in Detroit, so like from months one and two.
• 15:58
  Mark Zweig: They had no idea what you'd done all this time at Pennies, which is directly relevant.
• 16:02
  Amber Dietrich: But they were wanting to come to Texas and they had reached out and called some people and somebody who was also at Home Depot at that time had left, and so they were doing HR recruiting for Amazon.
• 16:13
  Amber Dietrich: And once people started talking, they were like, hey, there is a girl we know of and we're pretty sure she's down there.
• 16:20
  Amber Dietrich: So that's what was just like somebody who knew, somebody who thought I was there, and so they called and they were like we really want to talk to you about coming to work for us and opening our first facilities in the state of Texas.
• 16:31
  Amber Dietrich: And so I was like, ok, this is exciting, but I'm not sure.
• 16:38
  Amber Dietrich: And they said come to Coffeeville, kansas.
• 16:42
  Amber Dietrich: You're going to spend an entire day.
• 16:44
  Amber Dietrich: And you did.
• 16:45
  Amber Dietrich: You spent an entire day.
• 16:46
  Amber Dietrich: You interviewed.
• 16:47
  Amber Dietrich: I had 11 interviews, wow, in one day.
• 16:50
  Mark Zweig: That's insane.
• 16:51
  Amber Dietrich: It was insane and it wasn't just even 11 people, it'd be a one-on-one, then a panel of three, then a two-on-one, then a one-on-one.
• 16:59
  Amber Dietrich: I mean it was an investment and I was like this is crazy.
• 17:03
  Amber Dietrich: This company, I think, is really going to do something.
• 17:06
  Amber Dietrich: It was very iffy, but you know, and I remember coming back and it was crazy because one of the things that you know, the faux pas of talking is like where you're at salary-wise, where you want to be salary-wise, especially back then, I'm not sure.
• 17:20
  Mark Zweig: And they trap you like that.
• 17:21
  Mark Zweig: They trap you, but then also it's like do I give them too high of a number?
• 17:26
  Amber Dietrich: Well, the thing about this is ah, I think the way I'm saying it's wrong.
• 17:31
  Amber Dietrich: I had been trying to make more money at JC Penney and we're talking an incremental difference of, say, $4,000.
• 17:38
  Amber Dietrich: And not to sound like bragging, or you know, I was doing the work of six people and the reason I know this is because when I left, they had to hire six people to take my job.
• 17:54
  Amber Dietrich: And the older you get, the more you start to realize like was this a good decision?
• 18:02
  Amber Dietrich: You know like they were fighting me so bad on this, like $4,000 difference, and I was putting in the time and a lot of it is like just stick with us and you're going to get their kid and you know, one day.
• 18:14
  Amber Dietrich: You know all these things.
• 18:16
  Amber Dietrich: And obviously Penney's went the other direction than Amazon right and well, this was the big debate at the time because I was going back to Rich and like the BP teams and stuff, and I was like I've got an amazing offer from Amazon.
• 18:29
  Amber Dietrich: And when they were, you know, we'll bring you in.
• 18:32
  Amber Dietrich: And at the time my seller was going to be $55,000 at Amazon and $10,000 signing bonus and the stock is where it really was going to be.
• 18:42
  Amber Dietrich: You know, maybe now, obviously yes, and it was just like do I do this?
• 18:47
  Amber Dietrich: And everyone at JC Penney is like you're insane.
• 18:49
  Amber Dietrich: If you do this, you cannot leave us Like we have such a great company, you have a guaranteed future here.
• 18:56
  Amber Dietrich: This is a startup.
• 18:57
  Amber Dietrich: They're not going to make it Like do not do this.
• 19:01
  Amber Dietrich: And so I was like well, of course I did it right.
• 19:05
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like, I don't know, I feel like if you guys really like me that much, you'll just take me back.
• 19:10
  Amber Dietrich: Sure, yeah, yeah.
• 19:13
  Amber Dietrich: But it's not going to be because I did a bad job, you know.
• 19:15
  Amber Dietrich: So I just like you know what.
• 19:19
  Mark Zweig: I'm going to go.
• 19:23
  Amber Dietrich: The best decision I made in my whole life Not an amazing work experience and that year was like, really I suffered.
• 19:33
  Amber Dietrich: You know like you hear some horror stories about Amazon and some of them are true, but you will never that was.
• 19:41
  Amber Dietrich: The biggest education of my life was that year and three months spent and in a little context, it was like we were building out 700,000 square foot facilities with nothing in them.
• 19:53
  Amber Dietrich: It was four walls.
• 19:55
  Amber Dietrich: You know, you went into the bathroom in a trailer, in a parking lot, and so it was like, day one, how do we build receiving?
• 20:04
  Amber Dietrich: How do we build shipping?
• 20:05
  Amber Dietrich: How do we build pack lines?
• 20:07
  Amber Dietrich: How do we build everything?
• 20:08
  Amber Dietrich: And then it was like, okay, we built it.
• 20:10
  Amber Dietrich: It wasn't good, tear it down, let's do it again.
• 20:12
  Amber Dietrich: And so, from day one to you know, in less than a year, we were shipping 23,000 packages a day.
• 20:19
  Mark Zweig: Wow.
• 20:20
  Amber Dietrich: I had over 100 employees, you know, I mean, you were just and we worked six days a week and we worked 15 hour days.
• 20:28
  Mark Zweig: So just, but you didn't work full time, it was only 90, a hundred and 68 hours.
• 20:33
  Mark Zweig: Right, you're in a way, you've got a really good point, so you were working part-time.
• 20:38
  Mark Zweig: But if you survive.
• 20:42
  Mark Zweig: What are you not doing?
• 20:43
  Amber Dietrich: live now.
• 20:45
  Mark Zweig: I mean, why would you do that, Amber?
• 20:47
  Mark Zweig: I mean I'm just curious.
• 20:50
  Amber Dietrich: Most people would say I think reflecting back is one I love working.
• 20:55
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 20:56
  Amber Dietrich: I don't think I will ever retire.
• 20:58
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I understand that You'll leave me.
• 21:01
  Amber Dietrich: And I don't even have any desire to yeah, it's horrible.
• 21:03
  Mark Zweig: I've done it a couple of times.
• 21:04
  Mark Zweig: I didn't even last a month.
• 21:05
  Mark Zweig: No, you didn't.
• 21:06
  Mark Zweig: You're not going to do this, or something.
• 21:08
  Amber Dietrich: You're going to sit there like right.
• 21:09
  Amber Dietrich: You're just going to get bored.
• 21:10
  Amber Dietrich: What?
• 21:10
  Eric Howerton: does time to work is my perspective.
• 21:13
  Eric Howerton: It's like we're humanly designed to labor work.
• 21:15
  Eric Howerton: We need to work, it's.
• 21:18
  Amber Dietrich: That makes a lot of sense to me, yeah.
• 21:20
  Eric Howerton: Because I think it's subconsciously like, if you're not, you don't feel like you're producing and growing.
• 21:26
  Eric Howerton: You know, and that's why I think a lot of folks like I've seen it happen over and over again people that stop, they just start to decline.
• 21:33
  Eric Howerton: It's like stopping working out.
• 21:35
  Eric Howerton: You know, I've got this, you just start losing a friend, okay, and he's crazy.
• 21:41
  Mark Zweig: I only developed a relationship with him in the last three or four months.
• 21:44
  Mark Zweig: But, billionaire, he's got a company that does 4.9 billion that he's retired from.
• 21:50
  Mark Zweig: He's the chairman and founder.
• 21:51
  Mark Zweig: He's 83 years old and he's out looking for a job.
• 21:56
  Mark Zweig: Love him so much.
• 21:59
  Mark Zweig: I have to do something.
• 22:00
  Mark Zweig: His mom worked for the Chicago Board of Trade in some sort of management job and she lived to like 100.
• 22:07
  Mark Zweig: She retired at like 99 or 100 and she died 10 days later.
• 22:13
  Mark Zweig: His dad was an attorney.
• 22:14
  Mark Zweig: He made it to 96 and he died like three weeks later.
• 22:18
  Mark Zweig: He's like you got to keep going, you just stay in motion.
• 22:21
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, he keeps your brand sharp.
• 22:22
  Eric Howerton: He keeps you thinking, he keeps you engaged with people.
• 22:24
  Eric Howerton: I mean honestly, like your work is predominantly the most of your social engagement with people.
• 22:31
  Amber Dietrich: There's something about that.
• 22:32
  Eric Howerton: I think it's a lot for sure too, I think it's another reason why, like the, I'm not a big believer in the remote work where people are in isolation, especially people that have or extroverted or ambitious.
• 22:44
  Mark Zweig: You know outgoing yeah, Don't just want that job that they can shut down from.
• 22:49
  Eric Howerton: Yeah.
• 22:50
  Mark Zweig: I mean so anyway, sorry, amber, we're sidetracking.
• 22:53
  Mark Zweig: We're sorry, amber, we're sorry, we're together, sorry Can.
• 22:58
  Mark Zweig: 90 hours a week there at Amazon.
• 23:00
  Mark Zweig: You got 100 employees, then what?
• 23:03
  Amber Dietrich: Well, you know you break.
• 23:06
  Amber Dietrich: I think I broke it.
• 23:07
  Amber Dietrich: You know you get to a point where I really wanted to get my master's degree and Amazon.
• 23:15
  Amber Dietrich: I will give respect to the fact that Amazon really said we do not care about this at all and will not give you time off to do this.
• 23:26
  Eric Howerton: Show some respect for that decisiveness.
• 23:29
  Amber Dietrich: They're decisive.
• 23:31
  Mark Zweig: They didn't support higher education.
• 23:33
  Amber Dietrich: They're not going to beat around the bush.
• 23:34
  Amber Dietrich: You know that was not their priority right then and I think I was like it's not exactly a great sign, though, for an employer in a way, but anyway.
• 23:43
  Amber Dietrich: No, but again times they have changed.
• 23:46
  Amber Dietrich: This now is like 25, 20 years ago.
• 23:49
  Amber Dietrich: Wow, Still already we're almost at 2025.
• 23:51
  Mark Zweig: So how did you do all that when you were 12?
• 23:53
  Mark Zweig: I know it's hard.
• 23:54
  Mark Zweig: She's just In these shallow neighborhoods, she's just blown me away.
• 23:57
  Mark Zweig: Okay, I know.
• 23:59
  Mark Zweig: So it's skirting the system.
• 24:00
  Mark Zweig: I don't know how you get it.
• 24:01
  Mark Zweig: So then say, you wanted to get your master's degree, so did you just quit and go back to school full time?
• 24:07
  Mark Zweig: Yes, that's a full new and I tried to quit.
• 24:11
  Amber Dietrich: Well, I had another job.
• 24:12
  Amber Dietrich: I keep trying.
• 24:13
  Amber Dietrich: You know I try not to work and I keep working.
• 24:15
  Amber Dietrich: But this is one thing that you know my husband was really pissed about I'm not going to lie Because I was like I just I can't do this anymore.
• 24:24
  Amber Dietrich: I can't do Amazon anymore.
• 24:26
  Amber Dietrich: I'm like I'm at the end, like I can't take it.
• 24:28
  Amber Dietrich: And also, you didn't eat, I wasn't healthy, right, I was hustling, you're trying to my girlfriend I worked with.
• 24:36
  Amber Dietrich: She was a cigarette smoker and she's just like, just cover me so I can smoke one cigarette, like she's like on the verge, on the edge, and I was like, okay, girl, go hide outside, you know, and we're like trying to, like we're sneaking food.
• 24:47
  Amber Dietrich: You know it was a wild time, but I was like you know I'm doing it, I really do want to go to school and there's other things I'm going to want to do.
• 24:55
  Amber Dietrich: And I didn't know that there was even a possibility of a career for me at Amazon beyond Dallas, texas.
• 25:02
  Amber Dietrich: You know it wasn't like they were talking to me about going to Seattle.
• 25:06
  Mark Zweig: Sure.
• 25:06
  Mark Zweig: So, that would have posed a problem for you anyway, wouldn't it?
• 25:10
  Mark Zweig: I mean, you got Bill there to think about, yeah, yeah, he's high up in JB Hunt at this point.
• 25:18
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, that's true.
• 25:19
  Amber Dietrich: That is one of the things that you know.
• 25:22
  Amber Dietrich: If you talk to somebody and it would be your short mobility who's career oriented people, you know how do you balance that?
• 25:27
  Mark Zweig: Exactly.
• 25:28
  Mark Zweig: It's tough.
• 25:29
  Mark Zweig: Whichever of you makes more money, I guess you go that direction.
• 25:32
  Mark Zweig: That's one way to do it.
• 25:33
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, that's true.
• 25:33
  Mark Zweig: But not necessarily always happen like that.
• 25:36
  Mark Zweig: So you went back to UT Dallas.
• 25:39
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, so quite Amazon, ut Dallas, and ended up in a job again, at that time working for Solvay engineered polymers aeroplastics manufacturing company.
• 25:50
  Mark Zweig: Okay, and what were you?
• 25:51
  Amber Dietrich: doing for them, running their distribution, so international distribution doing Most of our stuff was in after-region, so shipping plastics to Mexico and Canada, running.
• 26:03
  Amber Dietrich: I had like 15 distribution centers across the nation and then ran all of the railroads.
• 26:08
  Amber Dietrich: A lot of our stuff was intermodal.
• 26:10
  Amber Dietrich: We started doing some tool work over in China when I was there.
• 26:15
  Amber Dietrich: So it was like understanding how that worked a little bit, but that was in its infancy at the time and that was the first time I worked somewhere.
• 26:23
  Amber Dietrich: That was bought out too.
• 26:26
  Amber Dietrich: So there's a company, lionel Basel, and they acquired Solvay engineer polymers and really for our technology and a couple other key things and I really loved my job but it was going away.
• 26:44
  Amber Dietrich: So I was down when they bought it.
• 26:46
  Amber Dietrich: We had 250 employees.
• 26:48
  Amber Dietrich: I held on until there was 30 of us, wow.
• 26:51
  Amber Dietrich: And they said, basically you guys have maybe a year at the time I can't remember honestly but if it's like we will shut down this office, you can keep your job, but you either have to move to Houston or you have to actually go back to Michigan.
• 27:03
  Amber Dietrich: So there was like a plant up there and we weren't going to do that.
• 27:07
  Amber Dietrich: So it was just like a tender.
• 27:08
  Amber Dietrich: You know my notice and left and started on the job hunt again.
• 27:15
  Amber Dietrich: I worked then for a company right away found a business over.
• 27:18
  Amber Dietrich: It was called Prime Distribution.
• 27:20
  Amber Dietrich: Good.
• 27:21
  Amber Dietrich: And what they did.
• 27:22
  Amber Dietrich: At the time when I came in, they were two guys that had started a business.
• 27:26
  Amber Dietrich: They were doing basically LTL type shipments, consolidation for Walmart and Sam's Club, predominantly working with small lines.
• 27:37
  Amber Dietrich: So we would build a truck of freight but in that truck you would have Topo Chico, you would have sun dried Er, sun made raisins, you know, like all these different foods this is what started my adventure into the food and beverage sector.
• 27:51
  Amber Dietrich: I worked there.
• 27:52
  Amber Dietrich: Their biggest problem was that they had the worst operating distribution center was in Garland, texas, and so they were like we want you to come in and your entire job is change management and like let's just see what you can do.
• 28:07
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like, okay, exciting problem solving.
• 28:11
  Amber Dietrich: We became the best in the nation.
• 28:14
  Amber Dietrich: So it was really a very fun challenge.
• 28:18
  Amber Dietrich: I had very bad apples in there, kind of like you talked about a little bit earlier before we were on air, and it was like weeding some of those things out, looking at best practices, looking at seasonality, highlighting the people who were doing the right things, putting them in place and eventually like there was no more work to do.
• 28:44
  Amber Dietrich: We were just we went from.
• 28:46
  Amber Dietrich: You know, bill will say stuff like you're a builder and not a farmer.
• 28:53
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, not a maintainer.
• 28:54
  Mark Zweig: That's right.
• 28:54
  Mark Zweig: We understand that here in this table.
• 28:57
  Amber Dietrich: And so.
• 28:57
  Mark Zweig: I totally get that.
• 28:59
  Amber Dietrich: I think that's boring, then it's boring.
• 29:01
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 29:01
  Mark Zweig: So then everything center control.
• 29:03
  Amber Dietrich: So what do I do now?
• 29:04
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 29:05
  Amber Dietrich: And then they're like, why don't you just keep doing this, like run the facility, keep your team, but then go into sales, like start doing you know West Coast sales and working in Mexico, and you know, see what happens.
• 29:18
  Amber Dietrich: So I was like, okay, this sounds cool, like I don't know how to do this, but let's do it.
• 29:23
  Amber Dietrich: And so that's like my career then went into you know, account management, new business development, sales.
• 29:31
  Amber Dietrich: I was working a lot in you know, guadalajara and Monterey, mexico, and just the West Coast and a lot of different farms out in California obviously.
• 29:41
  Amber Dietrich: And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, my phone rang and there was a company that wanted to talk.
• 29:48
  Amber Dietrich: A guy called and he's like hey, there's a group of people out of Farzaba, israel, and they want to talk to you about starting a company with them in Dallas, texas.
• 29:57
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like, well, what is the company?
• 29:59
  Amber Dietrich: And they were like, well, think of like Etsy, but kind of higher end.
• 30:05
  Amber Dietrich: So it's like the art of butchery the art of shoemaking, you know, making watches, like this type of stuff, like industries that are dying but like we really shouldn't, they should be preserved.
• 30:18
  Mark Zweig: And so I mean Artisan bread, artisan shoes, artisan candles, everything's artisan.
• 30:26
  Amber Dietrich: It really has.
• 30:27
  Amber Dietrich: But and at the time we know, but this was like 2009.
• 30:30
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like I don't know, I mean it sounds cool, it's not going to work, I mean there's no business here, but like there's no here here.
• 30:40
  Amber Dietrich: There's nothing.
• 30:40
  Amber Dietrich: This isn't real.
• 30:41
  Amber Dietrich: But you know, I will like I'll keep watching what you guys do and you know, and thanks for calling, you know.
• 30:48
  Amber Dietrich: And like a week later this guy his name was Paul and he calls back and he's like listen, just go on a date with us, you don't have to marry us One date, we can meet in a public place.
• 31:00
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like okay, you're funny.
• 31:02
  Amber Dietrich: Like okay.
• 31:03
  Mark Zweig: I'll show up.
• 31:04
  Mark Zweig: If you're funny, then I'll show up.
• 31:05
  Mark Zweig: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 31:08
  Amber Dietrich: And he's like, okay, and so we I showed up and really listened to him and saw everything.
• 31:14
  Amber Dietrich: I still didn't think it was going to work, but I was just like you know it wasn't.
• 31:18
  Amber Dietrich: There was more depth to it.
• 31:20
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 31:21
  Amber Dietrich: And so I met the first couple of founders.
• 31:22
  Amber Dietrich: That was horrible.
• 31:24
  Amber Dietrich: It did not go well.
• 31:25
  Amber Dietrich: Um, it was.
• 31:28
  Amber Dietrich: There was a lot of silence and it was just just awkward.
• 31:32
  Amber Dietrich: And so it was like I don't, I don't think I fit.
• 31:34
  Amber Dietrich: You know, this isn't feel good, I don't, I don't think I know what they're looking for at all.
• 31:39
  Amber Dietrich: And so I left, I took my name out of the hat again and then Paul's like okay, come on, meet us one more time.
• 31:47
  Amber Dietrich: There's another guy coming into town.
• 31:49
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like my uncle on for punishment.
• 31:52
  Amber Dietrich: And so I came.
• 31:54
  Amber Dietrich: I was like all right, one more time, so I meet.
• 31:56
  Amber Dietrich: And, and really, game changer, you know, uh, the guy's name is Leor.
• 32:01
  Amber Dietrich: He came into town.
• 32:03
  Amber Dietrich: He's very charismatic.
• 32:05
  Amber Dietrich: He really had, like the passion for what this business was going to be.
• 32:10
  Amber Dietrich: He was explaining like yeah, this is our concept, but like what?
• 32:13
  Amber Dietrich: What?
• 32:13
  Amber Dietrich: We had the ability to do this, let's just figure out what it is.
• 32:18
  Amber Dietrich: And they had done a lot of market research.
• 32:20
  Amber Dietrich: There was proof in the market that that artists and foods were growing, the market was growing and it was underserved.
• 32:27
  Amber Dietrich: And so when you started to really look at the data in the research, you were like wait, there could be a business here.
• 32:33
  Amber Dietrich: It's just the approach wasn't right day one.
• 32:35
  Amber Dietrich: And so, yes, we're learning everything.
• 32:39
  Amber Dietrich: We you know you build in, and again Amazon comes right back into why this was important.
• 32:44
  Amber Dietrich: It was like understanding that you can build something, don't be tied to it.
• 32:48
  Mark Zweig: Be ready to rework this and you know, we Thank you for not saying pivot Amber.
• 32:55
  Amber Dietrich: Pivot has been overused.
• 32:56
  Mark Zweig: Okay.
• 32:57
  Amber Dietrich: We can retire that word now.
• 32:58
  Mark Zweig: I just so damn sick of it.
• 33:00
  Mark Zweig: You said it so much more eloquently and I'm grateful, you know, and so are our listeners.
• 33:07
  Mark Zweig: I really liked the word pivot more, eric, we'll talk about that after this session.
• 33:13
  Mark Zweig: Okay, so you got to be flexible, you got to be willing to change, right?
• 33:18
  Mark Zweig: Okay?
• 33:19
  Amber Dietrich: We have all of these Brilliant engineers in Israel working behind the scenes, coding, building websites.
• 33:27
  Amber Dietrich: We launch and I can't remember.
• 33:30
  Mark Zweig: So obviously you went to work for these guys.
• 33:32
  Amber Dietrich: Yes, I took the job, okay, you know, yeah, we build our website, we launch with like six artisans and the whole idea, and I guess, yes, I didn't do a good job articulating, but we did end up building what became the largest artisanal grocery delivery company in the nation.
• 33:51
  Mark Zweig: Wow.
• 33:52
  Amber Dietrich: And so it launched with six artisans in Dallas on a website.
• 33:57
  Amber Dietrich: It was called Silver Light, Silver Flash, Silver something or another.
• 34:01
  Mark Zweig: What the heck does that have to do with?
• 34:03
  Amber Dietrich: anything.
• 34:03
  Amber Dietrich: It became obsolete immediately after we launched, so we had to scrap the whole business, start all over again.
• 34:10
  Amber Dietrich: You know it was like a panic.
• 34:11
  Amber Dietrich: Oh my gosh.
• 34:12
  Amber Dietrich: We did this and now nobody's computer can even open this.
• 34:16
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, technology advanced and their browser's.
• 34:19
  Amber Dietrich: So fast and they were like no one can ever open this in four days it was just like oh my gosh it started over.
• 34:25
  Amber Dietrich: So it was like, you know, from jump you're just learning and this model doesn't exist and we were building what was really unique about it and I feel like people did not understand this and at the time, you know, we were self-funded, they had money that was coming in from a large IT contract that was just being invested in growing this idea.
• 34:45
  Amber Dietrich: But everyone knew from the beginning that there was a time limit on this happening.
• 34:50
  Amber Dietrich: So we either had to be profitable or we at least had to have enough proof points to be able to get private equity or VCs to back it.
• 34:59
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, get some traction in the market.
• 35:01
  Mark Zweig: That's what you're talking about.
• 35:02
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 35:04
  Amber Dietrich: We went from six artisans to 80 in Dallas.
• 35:08
  Amber Dietrich: We launched in 20.
• 35:10
  Amber Dietrich: So this was in 2010.
• 35:12
  Amber Dietrich: You know, within a year we were launching Chicago Illinois.
• 35:16
  Amber Dietrich: We grew 150 artisans there.
• 35:18
  Amber Dietrich: The concept worked in the sense that you know, you and Sonia would go to artisonecom.
• 35:25
  Amber Dietrich: You would shop for artisan foods.
• 35:26
  Amber Dietrich: Your meat was coming from the local butcher, fishmonger, chocolateeered cheese maker, roasters, you know, chickens from farms that were in our actual community, eggs, honey, everything and the logistics.
• 35:43
  Amber Dietrich: And my, my biggest contribution was figuring out how to pick that up fresh every single day and deliver same day.
• 35:49
  Mark Zweig: Wow, I can see that be hard with all those different sources that you're going to.
• 35:52
  Mark Zweig: It's going to be very hard.
• 35:53
  Mark Zweig: And the tech side.
• 35:54
  Mark Zweig: The tech side was really advanced in that time too, because they were writing.
• 36:00
  Amber Dietrich: You know, imagine that you come in and you shop from 10 different people.
• 36:02
  Amber Dietrich: Well, they were writing a program that would allow the system to receive an order, split it to 10 different artisans.
• 36:10
  Amber Dietrich: They only see their portion, so they don't have to like weed through things.
• 36:17
  Amber Dietrich: You know be able to fill.
• 36:19
  Amber Dietrich: You know fill the order, put their package together, put an order number on it.
• 36:22
  Amber Dietrich: I would send drivers out that would do round robin pickups.
• 36:25
  Amber Dietrich: They would come back to our DC, like we would very quickly repack all of this into like master packs and then we would load vans and then ship them right away out to people's homes, yep, so concept.
• 36:37
  Amber Dietrich: That does sound hard, doesn't it?
• 36:41
  Amber Dietrich: It was a lot of touches, yeah, you know.
• 36:43
  Amber Dietrich: So there were things that you knew, like day one isn't sustainable, but also it's the smart way to start, and eventually you're like, okay, how, how does this really work, though?
• 36:52
  Amber Dietrich: Because I think where I always tripped up on it is like you can't feed Dallas, fort Worth, with artisans.
• 37:03
  Amber Dietrich: Really, it's such a big area and so fragmented.
• 37:07
  Mark Zweig: It's so big.
• 37:08
  Amber Dietrich: And then you take why the reason artisans are artisans and you make them corporations, right, like you're forcing them to be what they inherently don't want to be.
• 37:16
  Amber Dietrich: Uh-huh.
• 37:16
  Amber Dietrich: So to me, I felt like, can this actually work without ruining what's great about it, you know?
• 37:27
  Amber Dietrich: And so then it was like we need to go to work to maintain what this is, but be working with Amazon.
• 37:33
  Amber Dietrich: Like Amazon at the time, it was really relevant because they had bought I don't think they'd bought Whole Foods yet, that's not true.
• 37:40
  Amber Dietrich: They had done grocery delivery so, and they had announced 10 cities and we had already been in a little bit of conversation.
• 37:47
  Amber Dietrich: This is what we're doing.
• 37:47
  Amber Dietrich: We have the ability, with an API, to plug into your systems.
• 37:50
  Amber Dietrich: You know you guys can do sundries but then plug into us and then we just allow people to max out.
• 37:57
  Amber Dietrich: So it's first come, first serve.
• 37:59
  Mark Zweig: Sure.
• 38:00
  Amber Dietrich: You have 100 opportunities to get something from the local butcher, and when it's done you go to tomorrow, you know, so you can still get something to just be today, yeah.
• 38:09
  Amber Dietrich: So then it was like, okay, this could work.
• 38:11
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 38:12
  Amber Dietrich: You know there's scarcity.
• 38:13
  Amber Dietrich: Scarcity can sometimes be a good thing.
• 38:15
  Amber Dietrich: How do we make this happen?
• 38:17
  Amber Dietrich: And so what ended up happening is just nothing could happen fast, which is weird because you know Amazon, I came from the fastest.
• 38:26
  Amber Dietrich: Everything we ever did was so fast.
• 38:28
  Amber Dietrich: But at this point now, 2016.
• 38:32
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 38:34
  Amber Dietrich: Really different.
• 38:35
  Amber Dietrich: You know, working a big company with a really small company is difficult.
• 38:41
  Amber Dietrich: Cities that they were rolling out weren't the cities we were in?
• 38:46
  Mark Zweig: Sure.
• 38:46
  Amber Dietrich: So it was like, yeah, brooklyn's great, but we're still in Chicago.
• 38:49
  Amber Dietrich: At the time we had opened up Denver, okay, and it was like I'm in Denver and I'm in Chicago and Dallas, but they're not in any of them.
• 38:55
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, and then the contract that we were servicing to even have the funding to do this, tender noticed that they were going to break the contract early and at that point we also thought that we were really ahead of the game.
• 39:07
  Amber Dietrich: You know, we thought we have 10 years on this contract.
• 39:10
  Amber Dietrich: At year five we started pitching to VCs and so we're like, surely everyone's like, two years, you're going to get a thousand, but plan for two years?
• 39:20
  Amber Dietrich: No, it was like we had been on the road for a full year.
• 39:25
  Amber Dietrich: We had gotten a thousand no's.
• 39:27
  Amber Dietrich: You know, we had gotten two yeses of second meetings, but nobody wants a logistics heavy company, they want tech.
• 39:35
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, seems too complicated and too personal, people dependent.
• 39:40
  Amber Dietrich: Too many everything and you were not going to get hockey stick growth and that hockey stick was the pivot of 2015 and 16.
• 39:49
  Amber Dietrich: I think it was the most popular word.
• 39:51
  Amber Dietrich: I heard it so many times and I was like can we just I can't take the word hockey stick, I can't take.
• 39:56
  Amber Dietrich: Can we just pick a different word?
• 39:59
  Eric Howerton: Can we pivot?
• 39:59
  Eric Howerton: Can we pivot to a hockey stick?
• 40:01
  Mark Zweig: Can we pivot to something else?
• 40:03
  Mark Zweig: Let's use a whole or something.
• 40:06
  Eric Howerton: This is all interesting.
• 40:06
  Eric Howerton: I'd recommend pivoting to a hockey stick type model.
• 40:10
  Eric Howerton: I want to get a hockey stick right To software and subscribers.
• 40:14
  Eric Howerton: Yes, well, that's what you did.
• 40:15
  Eric Howerton: I did pivot to a hockey stick.
• 40:17
  Mark Zweig: You did pivot into a hockey stick.
• 40:19
  Mark Zweig: It worked out well.
• 40:20
  Amber Dietrich: At least it was working for one of us in this room, right?
• 40:24
  Mark Zweig: So so it.
• 40:25
  Mark Zweig: I played ice hockey.
• 40:26
  Mark Zweig: I don't know if you knew that, but I played for like nine years and I was the captain of my team.
• 40:31
  Mark Zweig: Really, yeah, Where'd you play?
• 40:33
  Mark Zweig: At Kirkwood, Kirkwood, Missouri.
• 40:35
  Eric Howerton: Really.
• 40:36
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, spent my youth there.
• 40:38
  Mark Zweig: Anyway, I was kind of a hacker, to tell you the truth.
• 40:41
  Mark Zweig: So then what happened?
• 40:43
  Mark Zweig: So you couldn't sell it, all right, so just shut down, or what'd you do?
• 40:49
  Mark Zweig: Okay, so then what happened?
• 40:50
  Mark Zweig: Now you're here in Fayette Bill.
• 40:52
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you moved here.
• 40:54
  Mark Zweig: And you were still doing this thing when you moved here, I think, weren't you?
• 40:58
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, we were trying to dismantle.
• 41:00
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 41:02
  Amber Dietrich: You know, I think the lucky part is that Bill had an opportunity here and so it was kind of like, well, let's go, you know, this is the time.
• 41:08
  Amber Dietrich: So we put the money in the bank, so we put the house up for sale.
• 41:12
  Amber Dietrich: We started coming over here checking everything out.
• 41:17
  Eric Howerton: What year is this?
• 41:18
  Eric Howerton: This was 2016.
• 41:19
  Amber Dietrich: 2016.
• 41:20
  Amber Dietrich: So we came to the area I had, you know, went back for a while and, you know, sold the house and completed, you know, selling off everything and I don't.
• 41:32
  Amber Dietrich: That was a devastating, you know, heartbreak of a time, but you moved into that fantastic house.
• 41:39
  Amber Dietrich: I did move into a fantastic house.
• 41:40
  Amber Dietrich: I mean it's so cool.
• 41:41
  Amber Dietrich: So there was, you know, one upside to this.
• 41:45
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, exactly.
• 41:47
  Amber Dietrich: And I and.
• 41:47
  Mark Zweig: I.
• 41:47
  Mark Zweig: The shower in that house is so big, Eric, you would not believe it.
• 41:51
  Eric Howerton: So I don't think our audience understands that.
• 41:52
  Eric Howerton: You built that house, yeah, and she bought it from you, right?
• 41:55
  Mark Zweig: Yep, yeah, it was under construction when they bought it, gotcha.
• 42:01
  Eric Howerton: But the what was it about the shower?
• 42:02
  Eric Howerton: It's huge.
• 42:03
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, he did build a huge shower Really.
• 42:07
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's awesome, Very bougie Anyway bougie Very bougie, we're moving to a new house too.
• 42:12
  Mark Zweig: I have to tell you guys about it.
• 42:13
  Amber Dietrich: Oh, you are Cause.
• 42:14
  Amber Dietrich: I love where you're at.
• 42:15
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, dude, this dude moves more than anybody I never met him.
• 42:18
  Amber Dietrich: I didn't think he would move from where they are right now, though.
• 42:20
  Eric Howerton: You should see there's been five times.
• 42:22
  Eric Howerton: I thought you never would move from where you're at.
• 42:25
  Mark Zweig: We've lived in like 16 houses in the last 20 years and Sonia and I were even married for most of that time, but we both moved a lot.
• 42:33
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, you did.
• 42:34
  Mark Zweig: But anyway, this new one.
• 42:35
  Mark Zweig: It's crazy.
• 42:36
  Mark Zweig: It's almost once a year you move?
• 42:38
  Mark Zweig: No, it's every couple of years.
• 42:40
  Eric Howerton: Well, yeah, no, no it's really close to once a year, oh well, I mean like if you move twice in one year, two times, you will be moving once every year, like last one we moved into in November of 2021.
• 42:53
  Mark Zweig: So give us a break.
• 42:54
  Mark Zweig: So you moved back here.
• 42:57
  Mark Zweig: Let's go back to Amber.
• 42:58
  Mark Zweig: Move back here.
• 43:00
  Mark Zweig: You're dealing with the new house, getting rid of your old one and all that.
• 43:05
  Mark Zweig: You were kind of depressed.
• 43:06
  Mark Zweig: You think oh my God, I'm moving from this cool area in Dallas to this God-forsaken place in the center of the country.
• 43:16
  Mark Zweig: What the hell is this about?
• 43:17
  Mark Zweig: Right?
• 43:18
  Amber Dietrich: I will say the first year was tough, but I think really is, because where I grew up so it was hard to go from your mission we had nothing.
• 43:26
  Amber Dietrich: You know, it was like there wasn't even a fast food restaurant where I grew up, so it was like really nothing.
• 43:33
  Amber Dietrich: And then you go to Dallas where there's everything.
• 43:36
  Mark Zweig: Right the shopping and restaurants you just can't be in Dallas for that.
• 43:39
  Amber Dietrich: No, you know you're not going to do anything outdoors.
• 43:42
  Mark Zweig: It's plastic, it's hell and hot in the summer, but yeah, it's got everything.
• 43:46
  Amber Dietrich: So much food, so much shopping, oh yes, I've never thought.
• 43:50
  Amber Dietrich: I mean everything Every major concert, comedians, everything.
• 43:55
  Amber Dietrich: And so then, when we were coming here, I was like, is this going backwards?
• 43:59
  Amber Dietrich: That's what I'm scared of.
• 44:01
  Amber Dietrich: How is this really going to change our life or my life?
• 44:06
  Amber Dietrich: And I do think the first year was really hard and I'm really honest about it.
• 44:09
  Amber Dietrich: But what I realized was it really had nothing to do with the things to do here.
• 44:14
  Amber Dietrich: They were.
• 44:15
  Amber Dietrich: You know, it's beautiful, there was outdoors, there was hiking, there was everything that you can do.
• 44:20
  Amber Dietrich: You cannot do in Dallas.
• 44:21
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's a good area.
• 44:21
  Mark Zweig: You're not going to spend a lot of time stuck in traffic here like you were there.
• 44:25
  Mark Zweig: It's great.
• 44:25
  Mark Zweig: Okay, it's a great area.
• 44:28
  Amber Dietrich: But it is extremely difficult to be in your late 30s and have no friends, have no community.
• 44:35
  Amber Dietrich: You know, in Dallas we lived in a neighborhood where we're all very different people from one another, but we really loved each other.
• 44:41
  Amber Dietrich: We did fun things.
• 44:43
  Amber Dietrich: You know, you have your traditions and all of a sudden I'm like I have no neighbors, no friends.
• 44:49
  Mark Zweig: If we didn't know that, we'd have taken you guys in more than Well it's okay, thank you.
• 44:53
  Mark Zweig: I'm still bad, Amber.
• 44:55
  Amber Dietrich: It's okay, you don't have to feel bad.
• 44:56
  Mark Zweig: We didn't do a good job.
• 44:57
  Mark Zweig: It's fine Welcoming you to the area.
• 44:59
  Mark Zweig: It's fine.
• 45:00
  Mark Zweig: So then, what?
• 45:02
  Mark Zweig: So for a year, yeah.
• 45:04
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, improved every year after that.
• 45:08
  Amber Dietrich: Now I would not leave.
• 45:10
  Mark Zweig: Sure I am.
• 45:11
  Amber Dietrich: You know why would you leave?
• 45:12
  Amber Dietrich: I can't make an argument for leaving.
• 45:14
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 45:15
  Amber Dietrich: And now it's even like a just different perspective because I love going back to the city Like I'll drive back over.
• 45:19
  Amber Dietrich: Obviously, I stay in my neighborhood with my friends, you know.
• 45:23
  Mark Zweig: Sure.
• 45:24
  Amber Dietrich: And I love coming back in and it's like my favorite foods.
• 45:28
  Amber Dietrich: I hit up North Park Mall.
• 45:29
  Amber Dietrich: You know I do all the things, but then it's like and then I get to leave.
• 45:32
  Amber Dietrich: And then it's like okay, this is actually.
• 45:35
  Mark Zweig: And you're glad I called yeah.
• 45:37
  Amber Dietrich: And then I come back and I'm like I'm back home.
• 45:38
  Mark Zweig: Every time I get out at XNA I'm like yes, yes, yes.
• 45:42
  Mark Zweig: I go walk outside of the terminal and I smell it and I'm like thank God for the chicken litter.
• 45:48
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it just like comes across.
• 45:51
  Eric Howerton: Dude it is.
• 45:51
  Eric Howerton: I mean like it's funny, but like poultry, poultry feces in the air.
• 45:58
  Mark Zweig: It's not the best aspect.
• 46:01
  Eric Howerton: It's like.
• 46:01
  Eric Howerton: It's like it's better than smelling cookies.
• 46:03
  Eric Howerton: I don't know about that, but it is Actually.
• 46:07
  Eric Howerton: It smells kind of like cookies, it's got a sweet.
• 46:11
  Mark Zweig: Have you ever been around a pulp and paper mill?
• 46:14
  Mark Zweig: They smell a lot like that.
• 46:16
  Mark Zweig: They really do A little cookie.
• 46:17
  Mark Zweig: Oh gross Anyway.
• 46:19
  Mark Zweig: So so what did you do, amber?
• 46:21
  Mark Zweig: How did you get going in business for yourself?
• 46:24
  Mark Zweig: I?
• 46:24
  Amber Dietrich: came here, I almost immediately met a guy named Tom.
• 46:29
  Amber Dietrich: Tom had wanted to do coffee with something he was working on for a while.
• 46:35
  Amber Dietrich: I was connected with him and pretty, I mean almost right away.
• 46:42
  Amber Dietrich: He was like hey, I really want to talk to you, like, would you ever consider opening a coffee company?
• 46:47
  Mark Zweig: And I was like huh, I don't know why, was he drawn to you based on that?
• 46:52
  Mark Zweig: I'm just curious.
• 46:53
  Mark Zweig: I mean, was it he thought you had money to contribute to this business, or I don't think so.
• 46:57
  Mark Zweig: I think it was like you thought you're just your personality and I think it's know how.
• 47:01
  Mark Zweig: Okay.
• 47:02
  Amber Dietrich: And I don't know how much he knew about me, to be honest, but it's like he had.
• 47:07
  Amber Dietrich: You know I've done some amount of homework.
• 47:09
  Amber Dietrich: He knew art is on at the time was a face of the company.
• 47:12
  Mark Zweig: I see, I see I was on TV, got it, got it Okay From that, that makes sense.
• 47:17
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, so like higher in food related products.
• 47:21
  Amber Dietrich: Yes, in a sense, and like a resume filled of building businesses that didn't exist.
• 47:27
  Mark Zweig: Right, so that way.
• 47:32
  Amber Dietrich: I spent a summer, you know, talking with him and trying to do due diligence and I think he was, you know, doing due diligence as well and and eventually I talked to friends out of Dallas that were roasters noble coyote coffee check them out if you're in Dallas and I called Kevin and Marta and I was, and Marta is from here and I was like what do you guys think about like doing coffee here and in 2016,?
• 47:57
  Amber Dietrich: Like there were obviously you had our seagulls doing stuff.
• 48:00
  Amber Dietrich: You know, Onyx was making their name, and but there still was not a lot of coffee.
• 48:05
  Mark Zweig: No, no, not at all.
• 48:06
  Amber Dietrich: But even when we were here, you had to drive in the car to like find something 10 minutes down the road.
• 48:12
  Amber Dietrich: So I knew that the there was opportunity at the time and they were like you need to do it, Like do it.
• 48:20
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like, okay, I think I'm going to do this.
• 48:23
  Amber Dietrich: And so, you know, Tom and I just got to talking a lot more serious and he was like I trust you, whatever you want to do, and let's do this.
• 48:32
  Amber Dietrich: And at the time again, you know, I had friends that were in Dallas, that were in private equity and I was like, you know, as I am researching this, there is a huge opportunity from Dallas to Atlanta in the Midwest to build a big company, not like a cute mom and pop shop.
• 48:48
  Amber Dietrich: And they were like proof of concept, Amber, just go proof of concept.
• 48:55
  Amber Dietrich: And so Tom and I were talking at the time and he was like I really let's go five stores.
• 49:01
  Amber Dietrich: So like the first thing was, you know, we were on the road and picking out locations and I was working on branding and it's like how are we naming this thing?
• 49:09
  Amber Dietrich: What does this look like?
• 49:10
  Amber Dietrich: You know, how is this adding value to customers?
• 49:13
  Amber Dietrich: Like, what are we doing and eventually we built what is now Boulder coffee.
• 49:17
  Amber Dietrich: We opened our first store in Rogers.
• 49:21
  Amber Dietrich: That was in one of John L Hunt's properties.
• 49:23
  Amber Dietrich: A year later we opened our second location, which is still open, in Garland and Fayetteville and we had gone through large scale development in Tonnytown and large scale development in Fayetteville and it just seemed like the writing was on the wall that it just wasn't going to happen.
• 49:43
  Mark Zweig: You know, in Tom the one thing wasn't going to happen.
• 49:45
  Mark Zweig: You had two places operational.
• 49:47
  Amber Dietrich: We had two places operational and three in the pipeline Right.
• 49:51
  Mark Zweig: I know you had the one on North college that was like semi under construction for a long time.
• 49:56
  Mark Zweig: Well, it's still there, right?
• 49:57
  Mark Zweig: No, I mean the building's there, but it's not Boulder coffee, this is not no it never.
• 50:03
  Amber Dietrich: The one you're thinking of is the one that's been open Long Garland, yeah, okay.
• 50:07
  Eric Howerton: And then there's a Boulder that's across the interstate.
• 50:09
  Eric Howerton: Here it's still operational.
• 50:10
  Amber Dietrich: That was the first one.
• 50:11
  Eric Howerton: Okay, that's the first one, got it so.
• 50:15
  Amber Dietrich: I just felt like we, you know, we the money.
• 50:17
  Amber Dietrich: Sometimes you just know the money's not there and if it is, it's not.
• 50:20
  Amber Dietrich: That's not the priority right now.
• 50:22
  Amber Dietrich: We'll just leave it at that.
• 50:23
  Amber Dietrich: And so our relationship was really good for a really long time and then I think in the end it wasn't the greatest.
• 50:32
  Amber Dietrich: And I just kind of felt like again I hate to say this, but like how do I keep ending up in these situations where I'm like pouring my everything into businesses where I have no control over actually what's happening?
• 50:47
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, that gets dissatisfying doesn't it?
• 50:49
  Amber Dietrich: And who do you have yourself?
• 50:50
  Amber Dietrich: Who can you blame?
• 50:50
  Amber Dietrich: No one yourself.
• 50:51
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 50:52
  Amber Dietrich: And like I told your students right, If you aren't the one with the money on the line, if you are not the majority, you are not the decision maker.
• 51:01
  Mark Zweig: What's the golden rule?
• 51:02
  Mark Zweig: The two or she has the gold rules.
• 51:04
  Amber Dietrich: There you go.
• 51:04
  Amber Dietrich: Do not see fooled, it doesn't matter.
• 51:07
  Amber Dietrich: Okay, so that's the reality of the world, and anyone can tell you anything they want, but when it comes right down to it, you know, if you want to have something that's yours, then put your money on the line Okay so.
• 51:21
  Amber Dietrich: So I left.
• 51:23
  Mark Zweig: Okay.
• 51:25
  Amber Dietrich: He, and you know, obviously he has Boulder and to this day I've heard he sold it and I don't know, maybe didn't, Didn't.
• 51:30
  Amber Dietrich: I took about a month off.
• 51:34
  Amber Dietrich: You know, I was like I don't even know if I want to be in coffee and there was a lot of just drama around everything and, like my friends kept saying like hey, this is weird because you're like, you know, you're an old timey lady and did you ever think you were going to be a old timey?
• 51:49
  Mark Zweig: lady.
• 51:50
  Amber Dietrich: You know it was late, 30s.
• 51:54
  Eric Howerton: It feels like it, but it's really not.
• 51:57
  Mark Zweig: People in coffee aren't out because they're all like young hipsters with lots of tats and stuff.
• 52:01
  Mark Zweig: Okay.
• 52:03
  Amber Dietrich: That's a younger culture.
• 52:05
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's fun.
• 52:06
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, those guys at on X and all.
• 52:08
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I get that.
• 52:10
  Amber Dietrich: So they're like like listen, you're an old timey lady, but you're a really good coffee roaster and you shouldn't quit roasting coffee.
• 52:16
  Amber Dietrich: And I was like is this?
• 52:18
  Amber Dietrich: What should I do with this?
• 52:19
  Amber Dietrich: You know, and that's why I went and I had a lot of touch points and ran around town and I was like no, yes I, there is so much bad coffee, you guys.
• 52:30
  Mark Zweig: That's the truth.
• 52:31
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I mean Starbucks couldn't be worse.
• 52:33
  Mark Zweig: I'm sorry, I just there's, so you know people are looking at me like I just made the worst statement in the world.
• 52:40
  Mark Zweig: The people in Arkansas are spoiled.
• 52:43
  Amber Dietrich: I don't know, you know, if they realize or not, because there is excellent coffee here, like there's excellent roasters and coffee shops, and get out of the store.
• 52:53
  Mark Zweig: We've got a lot yeah.
• 52:56
  Amber Dietrich: And very high quality.
• 52:57
  Amber Dietrich: So it's like I don't know if you realize, you know, if you get out of town and you don't have to drive too far and you're like, wow, this is different.
• 53:07
  Mark Zweig: Sure.
• 53:09
  Amber Dietrich: You know, I went, I talked to Bill and I was like I just I don't know how to do this.
• 53:13
  Amber Dietrich: Here's another challenge.
• 53:15
  Mark Zweig: Bill's the husband.
• 53:15
  Mark Zweig: Folks, just to refresh your mind.
• 53:18
  Amber Dietrich: I was like I kept saying, like I just I want to do my own thing.
• 53:22
  Amber Dietrich: And here's what's important.
• 53:24
  Amber Dietrich: And people ask that all the time, like why confident coffee roasters?
• 53:27
  Amber Dietrich: It is a hundred percent how I felt.
• 53:30
  Eric Howerton: Love it.
• 53:30
  Eric Howerton: I was going to ask.
• 53:32
  Amber Dietrich: And I just it took a long time, but I got there and I kept talking to my friends and I'm like, look, this didn't work out.
• 53:40
  Amber Dietrich: Okay, boulder didn't work out, but coffee is where I'm supposed to be.
• 53:45
  Mark Zweig: Sure and.
• 53:46
  Amber Dietrich: I know this and I kept saying I'm just, I'm confident, I just know this.
• 53:49
  Amber Dietrich: I don't really know how I'm going to compete with myself in a market.
• 53:52
  Amber Dietrich: You know, it's like, how do you, like I had just branded a business I had already put, like you know, live bold, because I love bold, yeah.
• 54:00
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, it's like this is me Sure.
• 54:02
  Amber Dietrich: This isn't just like some nameless business.
• 54:05
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 54:06
  Amber Dietrich: So it's like how am I me in this market when I'm right there and and, but I can't be that anymore.
• 54:12
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 54:13
  Amber Dietrich: And so I was just like no, you know one of if I were to do this again.
• 54:18
  Amber Dietrich: And everything you do, you learn something.
• 54:19
  Mark Zweig: Sure.
• 54:20
  Amber Dietrich: So it's like like what are things that I actually am passionate about?
• 54:24
  Amber Dietrich: And you know, for me it was like once you get into coffee and you, once you go to origin and once you visit farmers and you talk to people and you look at like what are the challenges that are faced in this industry?
• 54:35
  Amber Dietrich: Like one of the things that kept coming up is like it's really hard for women to take a predominant role in coffee in an ownership way.
• 54:45
  Amber Dietrich: You know, obviously women are the 70% of the workforce of specialty coffee.
• 54:50
  Amber Dietrich: Is women?
• 54:50
  Amber Dietrich: Sure they're.
• 54:51
  Amber Dietrich: They're the laborers.
• 54:52
  Amber Dietrich: Right.
• 54:54
  Amber Dietrich: And there are, you know, still countries where women can't even own property, and so I was, like, you know, as an empowered woman.
• 55:02
  Amber Dietrich: That's like naming a company, confident coffee roasters.
• 55:07
  Amber Dietrich: I think one of the greatest things that we can do is look at like, how can we also, you know, elevate women throughout our value chain?
• 55:13
  Amber Dietrich: And so it just kind of started to really fall into place and the things that I really cared about I also had the freedom to do and I think it is weird to say that, because it's not like I was 21, out of college and trying to figure it out.
• 55:30
  Amber Dietrich: I don't know why it took so long to understand entrepreneurship and ownership is freedom, now freedom.
• 55:42
  Mark Zweig: It's a tether at the same time.
• 55:44
  Amber Dietrich: Means many different things, too many different things Like when your toilet was overflowing.
• 55:49
  Mark Zweig: you had the freedom to fix that.
• 55:51
  Amber Dietrich: I had the freedom.
• 55:52
  Amber Dietrich: Yes, when people flush their underpants down your toilet and your establishment you had that happen, oh man.
• 56:03
  Amber Dietrich: That's the freedom of fixing that problem.
• 56:06
  Eric Howerton: Yes, congratulations.
• 56:09
  Mark Zweig: But yeah, the confident coffee name, like my wife's proudly got her sticker on the back of her car, you know yeah, you know what I love.
• 56:18
  Eric Howerton: When I first saw your coffee shop in the Rogers location and I saw the name of it, I was I'm so happy to hear you say where it comes from, because it actually the name resonated with me, because I'm a big believer in confidence, Like confidence is almost everything that you need in your entire freaking life to get through it, man.
• 56:41
  Eric Howerton: And that was such a cool meaning behind that, because I resonated with it.
• 56:46
  Eric Howerton: I'm glad that you know that's why you chose it.
• 56:48
  Eric Howerton: I mean, it's just it's beautiful.
• 56:50
  Eric Howerton: What a fantastic, what a fantastic name and brand.
• 56:54
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 56:56
  Eric Howerton: It's championship.
• 56:57
  Eric Howerton: It's good coffee too.
• 56:58
  Mark Zweig: No, no, no, totally yeah, but the name.
• 57:02
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, the name's fantastic Name.
• 57:04
  Eric Howerton: Brings in the good coffee, Makes the coffee even damn better.
• 57:07
  Eric Howerton: It does.
• 57:08
  Mark Zweig: Amber makes it better.
• 57:09
  Mark Zweig: Hell, we just have an Amber involved with it makes it better, I agree.
• 57:13
  Eric Howerton: So so how many locations do you have now with confident coffee?
• 57:16
  Amber Dietrich: So we have two.
• 57:18
  Eric Howerton: Which you have one in Rogers.
• 57:19
  Amber Dietrich: We have one in Rogers.
• 57:20
  Amber Dietrich: We have our original location in Johnson.
• 57:21
  Amber Dietrich: That's where we roast everything.
• 57:23
  Amber Dietrich: We actually have a commercial bakery in Johnson as well now.
• 57:26
  Eric Howerton: So Where's that at in Johnson?
• 57:27
  Eric Howerton: I'm sorry, I'm un-made.
• 57:28
  Amber Dietrich: You know where Wright's barbecue in LaMadia Luna is Okay okay, yes.
• 57:31
  Amber Dietrich: We form kind of like a food triangle right there.
• 57:35
  Eric Howerton: Oh, okay, cool, Okay, that's a cool place.
• 57:37
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, then this morning we made the big announcement that we're actually coming to downtown Springdale.
• 57:43
  Mark Zweig: Right Fantastic man Springdale is coming up, thank you for coming up.
• 57:46
  Eric Howerton: Man, thank you for contributing to Springdale.
• 57:48
  Eric Howerton: It is.
• 57:48
  Eric Howerton: It was fantastic.
• 57:50
  Mark Zweig: We were just down there the other night at Odd Soul.
• 57:53
  Mark Zweig: Yeah man, it's a cool place.
• 57:55
  Mark Zweig: It's just great I mean you know you're in there.
• 57:57
  Mark Zweig: I mean, when I think about like downtown Springdale, 20 years ago I could have bought blocks of buildings for $100,000.
• 58:04
  Mark Zweig: And now I looked around and there's all these yuppies.
• 58:07
  Mark Zweig: They look like they work in computer companies and I mean it's like where did all these people come from?
• 58:13
  Mark Zweig: You know?
• 58:15
  Amber Dietrich: I will say, like one thing that's like humbling, or you know that you have to think about going into Springdale now.
• 58:20
  Amber Dietrich: It's like there's already been businesses there doing the struggle busts.
• 58:26
  Amber Dietrich: You know like they're the ones that have been building the community.
• 58:29
  Amber Dietrich: That's right.
• 58:30
  Amber Dietrich: They've been there for three to five years.
• 58:32
  Amber Dietrich: You know they weathered and were being shut down.
• 58:35
  Mark Zweig: Right Con Caso was one of those that now shut down their location there.
• 58:39
  Amber Dietrich: I don't know if you knew that Did he technically shut down?
• 58:42
  Mark Zweig: He told me did.
• 58:43
  Mark Zweig: Oh, wow, I didn't know.
• 58:44
  Amber Dietrich: I knew it, he had put a shout out at one time that he wanted somebody to do it.
• 58:47
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah Well, downtown Springdale's got, I mean it's got a.
• 58:52
  Eric Howerton: It's the leading edge of a mixed, diverse cultural.
• 58:57
  Eric Howerton: I mean the diversity there.
• 58:59
  Eric Howerton: I mean it's fantastic, like I think there's some cultural epicenter there that's going on that could, which I hope is nourished and amplified.
• 59:10
  Eric Howerton: I think it will.
• 59:10
  Eric Howerton: I think it will be too.
• 59:11
  Eric Howerton: Yeah Well, it's just, it's got.
• 59:13
  Eric Howerton: That's something precious that I don't know where that's held anywhere else, the Northwest Arkansas Council is brilliant.
• 59:20
  Mark Zweig: I mean, they've really engineered a unique identity for each one of these sort of metro areas that we have Rogers, bentonville, springdale, fayetteville, and Springdale, I think, is rapidly becoming the place for the young hip people who can't afford to live necessarily.
• 59:37
  Mark Zweig: Well, that's what I'm saying.
• 59:38
  Amber Dietrich: It's the only place, they're told, any kind of affordable housing.
• 59:41
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it really is, and they're really making the downtown nice.
• 59:44
  Mark Zweig: They've been.
• 59:45
  Mark Zweig: I mean Tyson, of course they were the seed that when they went in there with their job at center.
• 59:51
  Mark Zweig: That tech center that they built, yeah that put all those people down there and really made it.
• 59:58
  Mark Zweig: That was the best thing that could happen.
• 1:00:01
  Eric Howerton: They have really great people running like the whole downtown association to the city planning I mean the government's even involved and just like how their perspective of building a fantastic growing community is.
• 1:00:17
  Eric Howerton: I mean like it's pretty awesome, it's a unique place.
• 1:00:21
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I like it Cool, so that's gonna be your next deal.
• 1:00:24
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, February 3rd.
• 1:00:26
  Eric Howerton: So you announced it is it public and everything.
• 1:00:28
  Amber Dietrich: Now we announced today and we're actually.
• 1:00:31
  Eric Howerton: And you're announcing on big talk about small business.
• 1:00:33
  Mark Zweig: bro, I know around the biggest media in Northwest Arkansas, so listeners the world's leading podcast on small business In Northwest Arkansas.
• 1:00:43
  Mark Zweig: Right?
• 1:00:43
  Mark Zweig: Well, we're based in Northwest Arkansas.
• 1:00:45
  Mark Zweig: Sorry, they covered the world.
• 1:00:47
  Mark Zweig: I'm sorry, you're right, sir.
• 1:00:50
  Eric Howerton: He's my mentor.
• 1:00:51
  Mark Zweig: So how is it this time around?
• 1:00:54
  Mark Zweig: You're in control of everything.
• 1:00:55
  Mark Zweig: How's it gone for you?
• 1:00:56
  Mark Zweig: What do you like about it?
• 1:00:58
  Mark Zweig: What do you not like?
• 1:00:59
  Mark Zweig: What have you learned?
• 1:01:00
  Mark Zweig: What do you change?
• 1:01:01
  Mark Zweig: What's?
• 1:01:02
  Amber Dietrich: Okay, I have zero drama in my life.
• 1:01:05
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 1:01:05
  Amber Dietrich: This is the truth.
• 1:01:06
  Amber Dietrich: Okay, you know, there's not not headaches or problems.
• 1:01:11
  Mark Zweig: Sure.
• 1:01:11
  Amber Dietrich: Or, you know, trying to make it to a podcast on time.
• 1:01:13
  Amber Dietrich: Of course, this is the day that it like ices and snows and stuff isn't working in the shops.
• 1:01:19
  Amber Dietrich: You know, like there's always headaches but there isn't drama.
• 1:01:22
  Amber Dietrich: I have a fantastic team and I mean that wholeheartedly.
• 1:01:27
  Amber Dietrich: I really changed the way I look at this.
• 1:01:32
  Amber Dietrich: Arguably, I could respect somebody saying that it's naive way to look at it, but I mean, it is my way.
• 1:01:39
  Amber Dietrich: You know, I have no long-term plans.
• 1:01:41
  Amber Dietrich: I think one of the things I learned like there's no control over this world, even when we try to think like I think the what do you see yourself in five years?
• 1:01:52
  Amber Dietrich: That's old timey stuff that doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:01:55
  Amber Dietrich: That's not real and there's no reason to even it's like six months now.
• 1:02:00
  Amber Dietrich: No, everything changes all the time and everything's changing in our lifetime so fast.
• 1:02:04
  Mark Zweig: So you gotta be ready to.
• 1:02:05
  Mark Zweig: Take every.
• 1:02:06
  Mark Zweig: Pivot like a hockey stick.
• 1:02:08
  Mark Zweig: Dude, look at the hockey stick.
• 1:02:10
  Mark Zweig: Gotta be ready to pivot Perfect timing To something else that's got a hockey stick growth curve.
• 1:02:16
  Mark Zweig: My approach is the same as what you're saying.
• 1:02:21
  Mark Zweig: No, I make sense.
• 1:02:23
  Mark Zweig: To me it's like take the meeting.
• 1:02:25
  Amber Dietrich: Have the conversation.
• 1:02:26
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 1:02:28
  Amber Dietrich: You know, find out what's coming, make some phone calls, ask people to drive you around, like you know, stay in the know but be very flexible.
• 1:02:38
  Amber Dietrich: And you know people ask me like, well, what's next?
• 1:02:41
  Amber Dietrich: I'm like I have no idea.
• 1:02:43
  Amber Dietrich: I didn't think I'd be opening up Springdale, but an opportunity to partner and I got to plug us.
• 1:02:50
  Amber Dietrich: So it's like a joint venture between us and Social Project Brewing Company and he's already there.
• 1:02:56
  Amber Dietrich: He's been there for a year.
• 1:02:57
  Mark Zweig: Which one is Social Project Is that in the White House that's been totally redone down there and real crazy outlooking Cause I know those guys too.
• 1:03:05
  Mark Zweig: They have like a German beer company.
• 1:03:08
  Amber Dietrich: That's someone else, so he's in.
• 1:03:11
  Amber Dietrich: It used to be Bikereck Brewing there, but probably COVID time they shut down when they built all of Springdale's, you know, new city buildings.
• 1:03:18
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about, it's right in between, so it's in Johns.
• 1:03:21
  Amber Dietrich: It's not on Emma, on Emma, but where Emma just opened up Homegrown, so it's a standalone building behind between.
• 1:03:28
  Amber Dietrich: And, honestly, we wouldn't be able to make this move at this time without him, you know he's like With a lower risk sort of situation.
• 1:03:38
  Amber Dietrich: He's already there, the overhead, and that's where you know we talked briefly but it's extremely hard to take on, like the debt to build out spaces and especially in coffee and even with coffee and food, like your transaction you're.
• 1:03:53
  Amber Dietrich: You know you're six bucks 650.
• 1:03:55
  Amber Dietrich: And we're not in New York City.
• 1:03:57
  Amber Dietrich: You know we have a great population of people and we're growing, but you, you know that's a lot of people you have to turn to be able to pay employees Like I really believe in paying people money they can live on Right.
• 1:04:10
  Amber Dietrich: So you know we pay living wages and you know we're paying our rent on time.
• 1:04:16
  Amber Dietrich: And you know there's all these things that you know I care so much about integrity and like trust with like my employees and my customers.
• 1:04:23
  Mark Zweig: I get it.
• 1:04:24
  Amber Dietrich: And and so you just you can want to grow as fast as you can.
• 1:04:28
  Amber Dietrich: You can't afford to, and so it's like this opportunity with Chris.
• 1:04:32
  Amber Dietrich: He made it where I was like we can do this, but without him I could not have done it right now, you know.
• 1:04:37
  Mark Zweig: Just being truthful, so we don't have any particular giant exit strategy and anything like that at this point.
• 1:04:46
  Mark Zweig: You're doing what you want to do.
• 1:04:49
  Amber Dietrich: I have no desire to exit.
• 1:04:50
  Mark Zweig: Good, not now, all right.
• 1:04:52
  Mark Zweig: Well, you got a long runway ahead of you, amber.
• 1:04:54
  Mark Zweig: You're still a young woman.
• 1:04:55
  Amber Dietrich: Thank you.
• 1:04:56
  Mark Zweig: I mean you could do any number of things.
• 1:04:58
  Mark Zweig: It's a long time to go.
• 1:04:59
  Mark Zweig: I mean, I was, I really hope so.
• 1:05:01
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, I hope so, and I want to be like 90 years old and and look and be like I rocked my forties.
• 1:05:09
  Mark Zweig: Hell, yeah, yeah, baby.
• 1:05:10
  Amber Dietrich: I rocked.
• 1:05:11
  Eric Howerton: All right yeah yeah, I love it.
• 1:05:13
  Eric Howerton: All right, what a fantastic story it is.
• 1:05:16
  Eric Howerton: An interview Really is, and I'll take a lot of credit for keeping my mouth shut this entire time.
• 1:05:22
  Eric Howerton: You did a wonderful job.
• 1:05:23
  Eric Howerton: I feel like I did the best job on this podcast.
• 1:05:25
  Eric Howerton: Just because of that word, he's not there Cause so many opinions and thoughts and accolades I wanted to throw in, but I mean what a great, what a what a fantastic journey you had.
• 1:05:36
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, Amber's a real entrepreneur and I think her experiences have led her to the past.
• 1:05:43
  Eric Howerton: She's on now and and that's could change- and no pun intended at what I mean, but I love you coming here and telling your story to give confidence to the community.
• 1:05:52
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, and doing this Cause that's kind of part of our deal, right, it's like how do you?
• 1:05:55
  Eric Howerton: I mean like let's have a real conversation about what life is and what entrepreneurship is.
• 1:06:01
  Mark Zweig: Less planning, less coffee shop, more entrepreneur-ing.
• 1:06:05
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah.
• 1:06:05
  Eric Howerton: And more entrepreneur-ing, just go do it, do it, do it.
• 1:06:09
  Eric Howerton: Do it, do it, do it.
• 1:06:10
  Eric Howerton: Figure out how to change the guys, dang handle on the toilet seat or pull some underwear out of the freaking plumbing and then go to the VC meeting.
• 1:06:18
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, because that's your next meeting, that's right.
• 1:06:21
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:22
  Amber Dietrich: And one of my employees did ask one day.
• 1:06:24
  Amber Dietrich: We were driving around, we're getting Rogers going, and she's just like how do you know what you're doing?
• 1:06:27
  Amber Dietrich: And I'm like I don't know what I'm doing ever.
• 1:06:29
  Amber Dietrich: I just show up and call someone and then they tell me what to do on the next thing, and so I go do that, and then and every city is different.
• 1:06:37
  Amber Dietrich: So yeah.
• 1:06:38
  Amber Dietrich: Just like keep on, keeping on.
• 1:06:40
  Mark Zweig: It's a learning experience, but you put yourself in the game, yeah.
• 1:06:43
  Amber Dietrich: I'm in the game.
• 1:06:43
  Amber Dietrich: Okay, you're in the game.
• 1:06:45
  Eric Howerton: That's it.
• 1:06:46
  Mark Zweig: That's it.
• 1:06:47
  Mark Zweig: Well, this has been fantastic, and, amber, if anybody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to reach you?
• 1:06:54
  Mark Zweig: Do you have an email?
• 1:06:55
  Amber Dietrich: Yeah, it's amber at confidentcoffeeroasterscom.
• 1:07:00
  Mark Zweig: All one word.
• 1:07:01
  Amber Dietrich: And very long.
• 1:07:02
  Mark Zweig: Amber at confidentcoffeeroasterscom.
• 1:07:06
  Mark Zweig: Okay, that's great.
• 1:07:07
  Mark Zweig: Well, we really appreciate it.
• 1:07:08
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, go get you a cup of confident coffee.
• 1:07:11
  Eric Howerton: That's right, stop drinking this.
• 1:07:14
  Mark Zweig: Stop swagger Eric's swag.
• 1:07:16
  Mark Zweig: Get your coffee.
• 1:07:16
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, wait, just stop it.
• 1:07:19
  Mark Zweig: Get good coffee from no one, all right, well, thanks everybody.
• 1:07:26
  Mark Zweig: This has been another episode of.
• 1:07:30
  Eric Howerton: Big Talk.
• 1:07:31
  Mark Zweig: About Small Business.
• 1:07:33
  Mark Zweig: Check out our website at wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom.
• 1:07:38
  Mark Zweig: That was long as hell, and if you're interested in sponsoring our podcast monies, bring it on.
• 1:07:47
  Mark Zweig: We'd be glad to talk with you.
• 1:07:48
  Mark Zweig: Thanks again, everybody.
• 1:07:50
  Mark Zweig: See you next week.
• 1:07:51
  Mark Zweig: Wee, wee.
• 1:07:55
  VO: Wee, wee, wee.
• 1:07:56
  VO: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 1:08:01
  VO: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 1:08:14
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