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Thank you, Bill Kennedy. · Coffee People Podcast

• 0:11
  Hey, good morning. I'm Ryan Wolf, the host of the
• 0:14
  coffee people in coffee smarter podcasts.
• 0:18
  Coffee industry lost an icon this week with the passing of
• 0:20
  Bill Kennedy, the CEO owner self-proclaimed head honcho of
• 0:25
  the San Franciscan roaster company in Nevada.
• 0:28
  Bill Gray star show for an hour in early 2023.
• 0:33
  And it was without a doubt one of those coffee experiences that
• 0:36
  shaped my early podcasting days. I clearly walked away with more
• 0:42
  wisdom and and insight then then he did.
• 0:46
  And I merely hoped I didn't bring the average down.
• 0:49
  I remember thinking, that's, that's Bill Kennedy.
• 0:53
  Why is he doing this little podcast?
• 0:56
  I was lucky enough to pass through Bill's orbit in real
• 0:59
  life too. I got a chance to tell him how
• 1:01
  much that meant to me, how much it meant when he appeared on the
• 1:04
  show, when we met in real life at several coffee festivals.
• 1:07
  And I got to sit and and have a coffee with him and he invited
• 1:12
  me to stop by San Franciscan, the facility, earlier this year
• 1:16
  when I was on the free coffee tour.
• 1:18
  I was going to be passing through and it didn't work out.
• 1:23
  I didn't stop and we didn't connect.
• 1:26
  And I just kind of said it'll it'll happen on the next pass.
• 1:36
  Bill wasn't only important to coffee because of San
• 1:39
  Franciscan, because it was a success, or a company that
• 1:43
  people look to, or because he made a point to produce
• 1:48
  beautiful machines. He was important to coffee and
• 1:51
  beyond because he gave a shit about people.
• 1:53
  He gave a shit about the people that worked for him and his
• 1:57
  community. He gave a shit about the the
• 2:00
  people his machines enabled to support themselves and the
• 2:03
  people in their orbits. Bill started his own podcast
• 2:08
  last year called Coffee Roasting Legends.
• 2:13
  He was a a natural interviewer who was curious about his guests
• 2:17
  and interested in continuing to learn from others when he was
• 2:22
  arguably sometimes the more legendary of the legend.
• 2:25
  In any interview. You should give it a listen.
• 2:27
  I'll link to it. I know that he was trying to
• 2:30
  glean a few bits of wisdom from each episode and, and I, I
• 2:34
  certainly do too. I want to leave you with one
• 2:38
  such nugget that he shared in an interview at our first meeting.
• 2:42
  Paraphrasing just a bit, but Bill said that in order to make
• 2:46
  it, you need to make sure you believe in what you're doing,
• 2:50
  have grit, perseverance and endurance.
• 2:55
  That stuck with me and and I've used that quite a bit in my life
• 3:00
  and with this show. So cheers to you, Bill Kennedy,
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  and thank you. You know, I, I would say, you
• 3:12
  know, from an entrepreneurial point of view, one, make sure
• 3:16
  you believe in, in what you're doing.
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  And if you do, and I did and, and I and I, I believed in the
• 3:23
  values behind what we were doing.
• 3:26
  You just have to have grit, determination, perseverance and
• 3:31
  endurance. And you know, our, our marketing
• 3:36
  advertising young lady, her, her father's a Nevada rancher.
• 3:42
  And we were talking about this just the other day, and she
• 3:45
  said, yeah, my, my dad, she would go.
• 3:49
  He says, what you do is you get it done or you get it done.
• 3:56
  Those are your choices. And you just do it.
• 3:59
  You just do it. Of course, obviously, you know,
• 4:02
  sometimes you're going to reach a point where it's clearly not
• 4:06
  going to be sustainable, you know, and you know, failure is
• 4:10
  your only option for that. But in any entrepreneurial
• 4:15
  enterprise, you know where you take failure is you.
• 4:19
  You just learn from it and you start your next opportunity.