Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Specialty Coffee Sourcing: Creating Sustainable Markets for Farming Communities with Geovanni Leiva

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Specialty Coffee Sourcing: Creating Sustainable Markets for Farming Communities with Geovanni Leiva · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: And still where we break down what it really takes to build a business that grows on purpose, not by accident assets.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Today's guest is the kind of entrepreneur that makes you sit up a little straighter.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Giovanni Leva is a Guatemalan-born entrepreneur, specialty coffee roaster, and the founder of Leva's Coffee.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: He immigrated to the United States for just$20, learned English in eight months, and went on to build a successful career in programming, and then did something most people just talk about.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: He walked away from the safe path to answer a deeper calling, changing the coffee industry from the inside out.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Through specialty grade coffee and a mission rooted in direct impact for farming communities, Giovanni isn't just building a brand, he's building a bridge to generational change one cup at a time.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're going to dig in how his early journey shaped his mindset, what it really takes to build a purpose-driven product brand, and how he's creating a business model that helps customers feel good and does real good.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get into it.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Giovanni, welcome to the growth class and thanks for joining us today.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is my pleasure and thank you for the intro.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lench, take us back, explain that whole story about how you got here and and your your journey and programming and then how you got to where you are today.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I got to United States in 1997 through a private scholarship.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I was able to come to the United States as an F1 student after.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: But let me take you back a little bit.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a coffee farmer.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a fourth generation coffee farmer.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So when you grow up in the coffee industry, you don't want to be in a coffee industry.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I was doing I was doing what everybody else wants to do, and that's escape the industry.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I've learned that over the years that that also happens in a lot of farming communities.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's um you either love it or hate it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I was one of those that I just really wanted to escape because school seemed to be easy for me, and I just uh wanted to do that.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how I ended up here uh as a student.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up as a student uh in Little Rock, Arkansas, out of all places, because the family they brought me, it was they were from Little Rock, Arkansas, and so they promised that um they've heard my dream of being able to achieve programming, learning programming and learning English, and being able to achieve something that I had never really done, been done in my family ever, and that was to be able to finish up college, go to college, and even better, actually going to America, which going to the United States on a private scholarship, it was only reserved for the wealthiest of the wealthiest, and uh we were definitely not that family.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: So what what's um did you do does your family own the farms that you're growing the coffee on?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or yes, so we've uh we've owned them since 1950 as a family.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something that we can kind of go and kind of trace it back to.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: My grandmother found a piece of paper that had that, but she thinks or she at that moment when I asked her that she thought that she it was another 10 to 15 years prior to that that they had possession of a little tiny piece of land.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're talking about maybe uh two acres, what is considered here in America, two acres.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so what people don't realize is 99.9 uh percent of the coffee is grown by small coffee farmers that they have a small little field and their backyard, and this is what they do, and so it's it's very common to have this happen in the industry.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we've owned that farm, and it's just been one of those things.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually a super funny story of how he got there.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it's about you know a radio that my grandfather traded for a piece of land that supposedly was bacon, there was nothing in it, and when he got there, I don't know if you know this, and the audience may not know this, but coffee grows wild.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Coffee is just a bushel that just grows wild.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so he got there and there was coffee.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was like, oh, okay, maybe I need to start uh with coffee.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, but on on a small plot of land, you can grow a lot of beans, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I equate it to like olive groves.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: In in when you go to Italy or Spain or Greece, there are people with small plots of land that have olive trees on it and they grow a lot of olives and and press it into olive oil.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the only issue is like one one plant, one bushel on a good, good year, it can give you about a roughly about a pound of roasted coffee.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it takes a lot, it's way more, it takes way more plants to produce that.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they need like olives, they need their space, you know, like they need to have their own radius where if they're too close to each other, they kill each other because they're they're fighting for nutrients at that point.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the land um needs to be so.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is something, for example, they will rotate to the disk through coffee right now, and then because it only grows once a year and gets picked once a year, and then tomatoes, then beans, then corn, and this is how families just kind of like trickle a little bit, and then once you get a little bigger, you buy a little bit more piece of land, you buy a little big piece of land, and so that's kind of what Abuelo, my grandfather, did.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so so how big is it now?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: How how how much you know it's uh our farm that we have that we farm through coffee.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: One of the cool part about this, so let me just take you really quick to the how this all started.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: This all started because my intention from day go day one and the mission will stay the same.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: The tactics and the strategy of how to get there will evolve.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the mission was very simple, and the mission is to help eradicate poverty in the coffee industry one cup at a time.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so the coffee industry means the entire globe.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: The coffee industry was never just meant to be uh my little village in Guatemala and my little family, it was the entire globe when I thought of that, and it continues to be that.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So our goal was to start it there and now expand across Guatemala, and then now we got three different origins that we kind of work with.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I tell you that because the farm today is about 13 to 15 acres where we actually farm.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it starts there, but because we have such a demand now, we get it from around us.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now this past year, we help about 1,500 families.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea was never to just do it from one specific.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the idea was him, we create a marketplace where we can go to the end consumer and we can join together and create his this circle where we all benefit each other by they have something that I can use that I really enjoy.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And how can I make sure that you get the fair price for what you're doing so you can continue to do what you're good at, and I get to enjoy some of the things that I really uh enjoy in the morning, and that's there's nothing to me like a morning cup of coffee at 5 15 in the morning with a with a Bible and a good book, and earth just stops.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want people to enjoy because I want to be able to share that moment, and so that's what every cup and every bean means to us personally.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I well I'm with you on the coffee.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I I but it's not just morning for me.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: I drink coffee all day long.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Me too, by the way.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Me too.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up drinking that all the way until about 3 30.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I said 3 30, I gotta cut it off if I want to go to bed by 8 30.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So Yeah, yeah.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that that does uh cause some issues, but you switch to decaf at about I usually switch to decaf at about noon, and then I can keep going.
• 9:05
  unknown: Yeah.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't do decaf yet.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a problem.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I can't just do decaf yet.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll get there eventually.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I a guy who um a guy who used to work for me, uh, I had stores this was years ago.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had stores in Washington, D.C.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And a guy that used to work for me there, uh, I recently met up with him.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we hadn't seen each other in about 20 years.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he said he said, yeah, I always remember you because you were always walking around the stores with a cup of coffee in your cup of coffee, cup of coffee.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been that way, I think um as far as back as I can remember, even high school.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I can remember getting up in the morning.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, I can remember getting up in the morning and and having coffee.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Italian, I grew up in an Italian house.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we had coffee in the morning, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I can remember drinking coffee in in high school and just uh loving it.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I've I've never put anything in it.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've never put sugar or or or milk in it.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I just drink coffee.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh but yeah, I love it.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and I said to my wife, we just we redid the kitchen and she built this um what what they call an appliance garage type thing where it's just a little thing and you can you slide it out and that's where the coffee is in the coffee machine and all that stuff.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I I she said, you know, maybe we should build a coffee station.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I said, no, I don't want that in case I I said, because you never know, I might give up coffee one day.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she looked at me like no, you're not, Phil.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: She started laughing.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Yeah, you're never gonna give up coffee.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not gonna give up coffee.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh no need for that.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it has so many good health benefits for you, you know.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's the other thing, is it's it's got a lot of health benefits associated with it.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are, you know, coffee is a plant that that has to go through a lot of um hardship uh through weather, wind, lack of you know, moisture and all that.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so it produces like that's what I tell people what I do when I roast coffee.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people, so I grabbed the coffee.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: All 90% of the work has been done by the time it gets to me.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they've taken care of this baby for 69 months.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: They make sure that they got picked right on time, they make sure it riped on time, they make sure they clean it, they make sure they dry it, only the good beans come to us, only the best of the best, the cream of the cream of the crop gets to America.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get here, and then what happened, what I have to do now is I just gotta get out of the way and allow what was in the bean to come out so that you can drink it in the cup and it can dissolve correctly in your cup.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I tell people, really, all I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to make sure that this mixture of chemistry happening from the green bean to the roasted coffee doesn't get messed up in any possible way so that I don't screw up what all these people have done for nine months.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I'm thinking every time I'm roasting coffee.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't want to screw this up.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I screw this up, these beans are done.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what got me is like America has the best of the best beans because I know what we drink by Kimanama.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when I got here, everybody was drinking burnt over roasted coffee and added all this cream and sugar to it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And my mom was just like, what are we doing?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is going on, people?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not what we're supposed to do.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so, out of four generations of coffee partner, I'm the very first one that actually knows how to roast coffee.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, I uh and we've never seen this side, we've never seen this side of the business, and so roasting coffee became a really like sacred moment for me.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, uh you know, I was like, I don't want to mess this up, guys, because the earth and you guys have worked through all this stuff together, and now I want to make sure that you I get it to perfection so that it pulls up.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: It it kind of helps that I'm a perfectionist in uh a lot of ways that worked out.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember when um again, going back years ago, we had retail stores and we roasted our own coffee.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: This was before you know Starbucks entered the Washington, DC market, and you know, it wasn't it was big it wasn't a big deal.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was a big deal to be roasting your own coffee because nobody was doing it.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um and I remember, you know, we had guys that we trained and and we had, you know, obviously the big roasting machines and things like that.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I I remember a guy who came to uh teach us and he said, you know, the reason people uh over roast the coffee is because they buy cheap beans and they that's how you know they essentially burn the coffee because they're buying cheap beans.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and so yeah, roasting it is is an extremely uh delicate process in order to get the best out of the bean.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's never the same because it changes with every batch of beans that you get.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have moisture and so you know I'm not a roaster, I'm not I I I just ran the stores, but I uh you know, so I can't tell you the specifics about it.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: But so so tell us about the business now.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: You have you have stores, you have you you sell wholesale, you uh Yeah.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you know the business quickly evolved from um I keep going back to Guatemala and I realized that that I that I gotta be bring some of that coffee.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I start bringing coffee and then quickly, you know, like I said, I run learned to roast, and now what we do is we have pretty much three verticals that we focus on, and that's a retail store.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we own a couple of retail stores here in Little Rock, Arkansas.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have our main HQ here in Little Rock, Arkansas, where we roast all our coffee.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: We we have a CR35 Didric roaster, it's only like the second one in the state that that we have here, and it's it's a beautiful piece of equipment.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we roast all our beans in-house and then we distribute them through a subscription program.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now we're calling them our membership program that we have on our e-commerce business.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we have an e-commerce business.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: We are on Walmart.com, Amazon.com as well, and then we serve offices, churches, and really one one of my biggest things has been just the nonprofit and the church.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um the churches uh because they align really well.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always said we all have to have a dream customer that we're after.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have a business, uh lessons that I've learned um the hard way, and these are, you know, I tell people I never went to school for a business degree, and some days I regret it, some days I don't.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I know street business.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And street business is um they nothing like street credits, man.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: They hurt, they hurt a lot.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I have the scars, I have the I have everything here, I have the shirt, I have everything that you want to have.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the baggage, I have the so because of that, I've learned that you have to just really figure out who that dream customer is gonna be for you.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've realized that my dream customer is that person that really cares about what goes into the cup, what goes into the ingredients of everything they do, how that is affecting the people, how we create a holistic system.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we serve a wholesale business nationwide as well, and we um we do this in a way that we partner with people to be enabled so churches and nonprofits and organizations have become a huge partner of ours uh because they get it and um they want to make sure that they do good with their finances, their finances um kind of like a double whammy, if you will.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, but yeah, that's what we do now on a daily basis, and uh we ever been that we wholesale green coffee to roasters as well, because now what has happened over the years is in the industry is people go buy coffee at Origin and and they have this novelity of yeah, my coffee for uh I buy directly from the farmers and I do this and I do that, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, we directly trade with the farmers and all that.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens is you come as a coffee uh shop and you buy maybe two to 30, 40, 60 bags of coffee different 152 pounds.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just call it 15,000 pounds.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is the consistency goes away because coffee being in the coffee business is really hard, just like any other business, they're all hard.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And whoever thinks that doing business is easy, I mean, I'm here to tell you it's not, but it's worth it.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth it, it's worth every bit of the suffering.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so we sell green coffee now because what I'm doing is I'm aggregating all the coffees that I can get my hands on for the farmers so that I can give them consistency and I can go, okay, look, I can use this in cold brew, I can use this on on espresso, or I can give this to a roaster down in in Florida or in California and say, hey man, we have some extra coffee.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like some?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then he has that direct connection, and then when he needs more, I'll be able to do that.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a huge part of what we do as well.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And my goal is secure a marketplace for these coffee farmers that I have consistency over a long period of time so that we can impact them not only on this generation, but two or three generations after me, because that's what legacy is all about.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think your biggest pain point to growth is right now?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think your biggest pain point in business is?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Such a good question.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I get asked that question quite sometimes, and and I think the best way that I've been able to do it is to be able to transmit this message to the end consumer.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because to be vertically integrated in the coffee industry is really rare.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so to be able to digest my message in a way that the end consumer can actually see that this is not some sort of bluff and some sort of you know the story of Juan Valdez, right?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know that Juan Valdez for Colombia, it was completely never never existed, never.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was a completely made-up story.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe that's what people think, that this is just some sort of made-up, cutesy little story that Gio is doing and then all that kind of stuff.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so being able to transmit that, no, this is it.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like we are the farmers, guys.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like we are fit.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and being able to do that in a way that I can learn to speak that into the consumer, that's been my biggest pain point right now.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's just there's no way that I can digest that information quickly enough and with the society that we have is a three seconds.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do I do this in three seconds?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: 15 seconds, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, but it I think at the end of the day is I'm building a community, I'm building a movement, and I'm building a place where we can come together, and so that's gonna take some time, and that's gonna take long conversation.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why being on podcasts are starting to hit uh click in my head.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe these are the types of uh moments that I gotta have so that I can fully explain what I do and why I do it, and you can see understand my passion behind this.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: My passion is to just connect two individuals and make two people's lives better each day by creating a sustainable market.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my biggest pain point right now.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: What's your uh what's your path to growth?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: What are you trying to achieve as far as business growth right now?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the growth right now that we're we're aiming for is this year is it's uh so we have a hundred, hundred, hundred, so a triple hundred goal, and that is to be hundred percent transparent, hundred percent traceable, and hit hundred million people in five years.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's a goal that uh would allow me to secure market for three generations to come.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what I mean by three generations, I happen to be the first person.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: generation is what they call a first generation immigrant into the United States.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I have my two sons, uh, who are sixteen and nineteen.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually I'm thinking about them and so their generation.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm also thinking about already my grandkids.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where I think okay well how about my grandkids?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: How about that grandkid generation?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So for my farmer partners I'm thinking the same way.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking what can I do today?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: What can I do for their kids that are coming up?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what can we do for those grandkids for them?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to do that you gotta create something that is impactful and that is large.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so one thing that the industry is really missing right now is a missing piece in the industry.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that there's no transparency.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: There is really no transparency.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as you may know coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, only second to oil.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And coffee is the second most drink beverage in the world.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Only only second to water.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually coffee is water anyway.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And but coffee coffee farmers are among the pores of the earth.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just that just has to we just gotta figure out how to even that out.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: How to make this some sort of way and if we don't do this we might not have coffee in the next few years.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: We might not have coffee because there's not going to be anyone wanting to farm this thing.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as I know nobody messes with my coffee and I'm going to do everything that I can to make sure that we have coffee for the next few generations.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's fantastic.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're out of time but uh you know I think that was I I think your mission is powerful and I really appreciate you sharing that story and what you're building that it's more than just coffee.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um you know what I love about your journey is that it's it's not just uh inspirational it's it's very instructional at the same time.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's important because you don't you know you don't you don't build a brand by chasing hype and made up stories.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know you build it on chasing meaning and quality and impact and proving those those things are you know aren't just nice to haves they're they're a competitive advantage when when you do them right so if if anybody who's watching listening right now and you took something from this episode do two things.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: First support Giovanni check out LeaveUsCoffee you can find it on Walmart.com, Amazon.com I'm sure you can buy it direct from your website try it share it and be part of what you're building and then uh if you're a founder trying to grow a product brand with a little bit more clarity and stronger positioning uh a strategy that actually matches your ambition make sure you subscribe to the growth class and uh share this episode with somebody who needs it as always growth isn't just about doing more it's about doing more of what matters so thanks for tuning in and and Giovanni thanks for taking the time to come on uh we appreciate it and we'll see you uh next time.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure thank you again Phil