Latest / Coffee People Podcast / Taka Kirstein, Takayoshi.Co

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Taka Kirstein, Takayoshi.Co · Coffee People Podcast

0:25
Speaking of stories, Taka, welcome to Coffee PEOPLE.
0:30
Thank you, brother. 20 minutes in, people are like, who the F
0:33
is this guy? Yeah, Yeah.
0:35
Can you give me a little background?
0:37
You know what? What's your name?
0:38
What's your company or what are you doing here at Coffee Fest?
0:41
And you know why are we talking today?
0:44
Absolutely. Well, my name is Taka Kirsten,
0:48
short for Taka Yoshi, my middle name, and I grew up in a few
0:54
different places, but I found my way to to Mesquite, TX just
0:58
outside of Dallas and then and then, you know, into a career
1:03
full circle in Austin where I where I joined a chain of coffee
1:07
shops. There's a guy from my church who
1:09
needed help and I, I was working in other industries and was
1:14
growing businesses working in so many different spaces.
1:18
I feel like I've worn like 1000 hats and but full circle, like
1:23
three years ago I joined a coffee business and at that same
1:26
time I also took money from from another business and invested
1:30
into my camera kit and I did a lot of research into how to make
1:36
my life easier. I used to shoot back in high
1:41
school, a lot of weddings, and before that I started in
1:46
nightclubs and DJs. And just like to see a
1:49
progression from that to now working in one of the things
1:52
that I'm most passionate about, which is coffee.
1:55
And being strategically aligned with the number of brands within
1:58
coffee To say, hey, there's a need for people like me to be
2:03
invested in your brand to help you come up with strategies to
2:07
get attention, to capture the stories of the effort that
2:10
you're putting in. The 10s of thousands of dollars
2:13
that goes into a show, as well as the community and the aspect
2:17
of the business actually doing good selling product.
2:20
And so in a sense, I've also tried to hang out with winners.
2:23
You know, I want to be hanging out with winners and capturing
2:25
winners. And, and that in in in a sense
2:29
allows for me to tie my sails like SALES to other sails, let's
2:34
say ILS and a guy guy who believed in me early on here in
2:40
the coffee fest circle is kind of Greg.
2:43
And, and he told me that a rising tide raises all ships.
2:46
And he took me under his wing and he said, hey man, I, I do
2:50
these shows, come with me. OK, cool man, let's go to
2:55
Chicago. OK, I'll be here in New York.
2:57
OK man, Before that, come to New York 3 years ago, meet these
3:02
guys, Joe Joe and Javi from Espresso State of Mind.
3:05
And they're like, hey man, come under my wing.
3:09
So, OK, cool man, let's rock out, put a camera receiver on my
3:12
thing and I'll start shooting for the Latte Art World
3:13
Championship Open. And they just brought me on
3:16
right on board and shot an entire season with them for, for
3:19
the coffee fest group. And, and we did the SCA
3:22
together. We, we did a Colorado coffee
3:24
show. And now that's turned into
3:27
myself. And I'm realizing that I am only
3:29
so much as one guy. And so my sister has also come
3:32
and helped me and learned how to edit and be my second shooter
3:36
strategically. And you know when we when we
3:38
talk about COVID, COVID for me was working with an E sports
3:43
team my sister was leading in Frisco, TX.
3:45
OK. And so we learned all about the
3:47
live streaming aspects and you know, we've been writing OBS for
3:52
hood rigs, you know, from since the 20 tens.
3:55
I mean, we've been, we learned how to do that with the original
3:59
Gopros and how to, you know, take an Elgato to turn a Canon
4:02
60D into a webcam and now just need a USBC cord and boom, you
4:07
got a webcam. I have to tell you will to get
4:10
it on the camera here in a second.
4:12
I want to get a picture of you with it.
4:14
When I saw you yesterday or when we met yesterday and I saw your
4:18
camera rig, it gave me PTSD because I used to shoot weddings
4:22
and like museum events and things.
4:24
That's how I got my start and out of college I was like.
4:27
Yeah, I totally have a wedding kid with me right there.
4:31
That's that's I. Just remember, oh, like I
4:33
remember walking around with the backpack and like the whole the
4:37
rig and the lights and my wife was my second shooter.
4:40
And, you know, she was like the calming force.
4:43
But she made sure all, you know, every, all the bride's dresses
4:46
were right and the tuxes and the flowers were good, right.
4:49
And I just got to bark orders, you know, and everybody.
4:52
And. Yeah, yeah.
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What I remember of that, though, is we we patterned our business
4:59
as if we we weren't just your photographers.
5:02
We were never going to be your photographers who were on the
5:04
sidelines. You didn't notice we were part
5:06
of your wedding party. And that was the deal.
5:09
And it narrowed down our audience, you know, into a group
5:13
of people who really liked what we did at that time.
5:17
Like, street photography was really big.
5:19
And so we were doing a lot of that.
5:21
But yeah, I saw that and I just immediately my back hurt and I
5:24
went, Oh no, it's got to carry that all day.
5:26
Well, I think there's like in a sense with with this world, like
5:30
kind of with your show, you know, you're saying like you,
5:33
you're uniquely youth. You'd created this show.
5:35
You talk to the people you talk to and in in the same way like
5:41
my, my style is my style. I've grown it over many years.
5:45
I started in the wedding industry and someone when I was
5:48
14 took me under his wing and said, hey, I'm going to teach
5:51
you how to use. Flash, you were young.
5:52
Yeah, yeah. I said I'm going to teach you
5:54
how to use flash. I'm going to teach you how to do
5:55
corporate events, how to do fundraisers, how to do derbies.
6:01
And he said, hey, you, you learn from me and eventually you'll be
6:03
able to have your own business. That's a guy named Robin
6:06
Jeffries that was back in back in high school.
6:09
I was my yearbook photographer on the side of my football field
6:12
and he just walked in to do a client shot.
6:14
And yeah, it's like nowadays it seems so normal, like, Oh yeah,
6:17
you just show up. You're doing a high like one off
6:19
high school portrait session for someone.
6:22
Well, sure, I get those kind of inquiries all the time now from
6:24
for all kinds of things, but for it to be like, Hey, I'm lucky I
6:28
was the one who who got to meet Robin and and he he was willing
6:31
to take me under his wing, you know, and so.
6:33
You had that. Sounds like you've had at least
6:35
2 like kind of mentors who guided you at least a little
6:39
bit. Have you been able to pass any
6:41
of that on? Or if you have, if you were to
6:44
be able to talk to someone now who is, you know, you, then what
6:49
advice would you give him? Let's say you were to meet like
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a 14 year old who was interested, yeah, or was
6:53
standing on the sidelines of that camera and you only had a
6:56
few minutes. What would you say to him?
6:58
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, dude, First off, my
7:02
mentors have been foundational to my, my, my character
7:06
building. So frankly, I don't even, I
7:09
don't even consider that I have a lot of success to tie to.
7:12
Like my life. I've I've, I have had wins, but
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I'm not a multimillionaire. I'm not a, you know, exited
7:21
business owner. But do you do what you enjoy?
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Absolutely, Absolutely. I think that's.
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I think it's, it's just a funny thing to to like speak about the
7:30
idea of success, but but in the sense of am I doing things that
7:34
matter and that are impactful? Am I surrounded by people that
7:38
love me? I gotta go walk down this room
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and I have 50 people that that would love to give me a hug.
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And just like how, how can you show up to the trade show?
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Just get that much love, man. It's like it's.
7:48
Such a trade show circuit is like an interesting world.
7:50
You do like it. You travel around and you see
7:54
the same people at a lot of events.
7:56
You're all kind of living out of a hotel.
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It's kind of like going to summer camp.
8:00
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But I just, I'm just like so
8:03
happy that I can now come into a room in New York City.
8:07
It's like I don't have any connections to New York City.
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I'm not, I'm not a New Yorker, but I'm I'm coming in here.
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And like now, it feels like a you don't go to a.
8:15
Very home. I don't get your coffee.
8:16
You know, I I've I've never gotten the Aki way.
8:21
I've never, never I've I've never been able to forget the
8:24
Bev. I mean, I could there's so many
8:26
things that I haven't been able to do, but but you know, coming
8:28
to New York, it's it's cool like this is a little, little safe
8:31
haven in comparison to the rest of the city too.
8:33
You know, you got you got a lot of quality people in this room
8:36
and and you get to like see some of the best from all the
8:40
different areas and they all get to come here.
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So so I'm, I'm just grateful man to to be in the room and the
8:47
work is kind of a second nature from it, like organically the
8:50
people that I know and love and people that like me too.
8:53
It's like I didn't, I didn't approach Kalafio with the former
8:58
formal business office where I say, hey, I see what your what
9:03
your agency is currently doing. Let me let me go ahead and give
9:05
you an offer just like an agency Rep.
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It was no, it was because one of my friends really likes me.
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And he said, hey, you get you're going to talk to Lisa.
9:14
She does our events. So OK, cool.
9:16
Thanks Yoshin. I appreciate you.
9:17
Bro Yoshin. Yoshin has been on our show.
9:20
We know Yoshin. He's the single best coffee
9:24
festival barista on the market. There's no way.
9:26
Absolutely. I mean, it's the same way by
9:28
coffee and Joe, right? Like it's like, hey, they're
9:31
they they they, they were the first group that that hired me
9:34
in this room and they allowed for me to go straight to working
9:37
with the latte artists. And now I could come here and
9:40
I'm I could say I'm friends with some of the best milk doodlers
9:43
in the world. I mean, it's incredible, like
9:45
the amount of, you know, effort and just time that they spent to
9:49
create their craft. Milk.
9:51
Milk doodlers sound so dirty. That's what they it's not this
9:54
kind of show, man. Latte artists, Yeah.
9:58
You know, even just like just seeing the, the amount of people
10:02
that have have have like the the latte artists is funny.
10:06
They call them milk doodles because they actually are real
10:08
career professionals. Like they they're here.
10:11
They're like, we're here to do poor milk in the cup.
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Whatever. But also I run a roasting
10:15
program that has 5000 events a year in the coffee shop or hey,
10:19
you know, I doodle milk. But I've also mastered like, you
10:22
know, pour overs and I create a lot of value for my company like
10:26
that. Those are the people that are,
10:28
you know, coming and hanging out and doodling a little bit of
10:30
milk. Why coffee for you?
10:32
What? What got you on the coffee?
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I mean obviously you're here at Coffee Fest, but like what
10:37
started you said you love coffee.
10:38
How did you get into that in the 1st place for you?
10:42
So the why coffee is sort of A2 prong question.
10:46
I think why, why did I like when I when I think about that, I
10:50
say, who introduced me to coffee?
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And I that would be my mom and my mom and I grew up drinking
10:55
coffee together. It's like one of my greatest
10:57
joys is sitting in my living room with my mom putting a
11:00
little bit of Starbucks caramel macchiato Creamer into a cake
11:03
cup. And that was our way of, you
11:05
know, taking a little donut shop coffee, a little little little
11:10
Costco, K-Cup, whatever we could find.
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And that was that was our coffee ritual and we loved it.
11:16
That was just such a cherishable moment.
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And then I said, you know, I want to get out the house.
11:21
I can now drive. I can, I could go to let me go
11:24
to Starbucks, man. And I'm going to start working
11:26
from there for a while. And so then I would go to
11:29
Starbucks. I got my gold card and I was, I
11:31
was rocking and rolling, going there all the time.
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I was networking with people. It's funny, like the the people
11:36
that I was coming into contact with, they were just, there were
11:39
some of these investors and some of these people were
11:41
entrepreneurs. And so some of the early
11:43
training. Oh.
11:45
Dude Mesquite right by Townie Small.
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The Starbucks across the street from Townie Small man.
11:50
The Starbucks I used to go to, guys would come to drink, they'd
11:53
bring their little mini bottles with them.
11:55
Totally different vibe. Totally, Yeah, I don't think, I
11:59
don't think I was hanging out with Alcoholics.
12:01
Yeah, but to to then go from Starbucks and I'm like, man, I
12:09
am not getting the same caffeine effect as I thought I was
12:12
getting when I'm drinking this coffee.
12:16
Let me learn more about this coffee.
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And that's when I started to learn about dark roasts, about
12:22
mold content, about quality of coffee, about where your coffee
12:27
comes from, how your coffee's stored, what the last mile of
12:31
coffee preparation should look like to get the best product
12:33
possible. And it's funny because, you
12:38
know, there was a group called La La Land Cafe in Dallas that
12:41
has now grown quite well. And they were just starting
12:45
there in Dallas. And so I remember in high school
12:48
going from a Starbucks to La La Land Cafe.
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I go, man, this is OK. This is like an introduction of
12:53
some specialty coffee and go, man, oh, I could buy some coffee
12:57
at home. And we can, we can actually do a
12:59
little pour over and slowly, you know, there was a guy named Dave
13:03
Asprey that would talk about the Bulletproof diet and guys for.
13:07
So for a little while I was blending my coffee with butter
13:10
in a, in a Vitamix, making a little frothy hot latte with
13:15
some butter in there. And I'm like, man, so glad I
13:18
found this steam wand and proper espresso shots.
13:20
But you know, for me to go through a coffee journey, it
13:23
was, it was, it's just beautiful now to say like I have been able
13:28
to progress. And I don't expect someone when
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I have a first conversation, to have 12-13 years of just really
13:35
learning about coffee as an individual.
13:38
And so now to transition professionally, you know, my
13:41
media is styled in for coffee. Yeah, my passion keeps me from
13:48
burning out. When I have to take 150 lbs of
13:51
equipment all over the world and back home in the late night to
13:55
go and edit after shooting all day.
13:57
The, you know, I have to run around a trade show.
14:00
There's a lot of stress going in between clients and making sure
14:04
everyone is taken care of, make sure I'm following through on my
14:06
word, producing what I say I'll produce.
14:09
But it's because I love this industry and this passion around
14:12
coffee that it makes it where you don't burn out.
14:17
I don't know that we actually said at the beginning what your
14:20
job title is, So what is it that you say you do?
14:26
That is a good, it's a good statement to be able to like
14:31
eloquently say like I'm the CEO, Yeah.
14:35
Yeah. But I, my sister and I have a
14:37
company Taka Yoshiko. So I'm Taka.
14:40
She's Yoshi Co, but it's actually my name is Takayoshi
14:46
and her name is Yoshiko. So it's Takayoshi Ko?
14:49
Yeah. Got it.
14:51
And I've also through my media work, I, I became connected
14:57
with, with people that are working specifically on the
15:01
green side, which has been fascinating because.
15:04
You're, you're taking video, you're photographing, you're
15:07
creating content for brands, right?
15:09
Yeah, well, that's, that's most of my work.
15:11
So I I've been able to amass a number of different clients.
15:14
I mean, I, I don't like to just list off names like I don't, I'm
15:19
not a name dropper, but to, to the sense of people that are
15:23
established brands trust us to go and do media, but we also
15:27
have specifically trimmed down the work that we do because
15:32
we're not an agency. We're individuals with talent
15:36
that are using it to feed our family.
15:40
But also there's a bigger play, which is I am an entrepreneur on
15:44
my core and scaling media. As an individual behind a gimbal
15:48
and a photo, it's limited. I can only do so much.
15:52
It's the same with like a show like this, you can only go so
15:55
far by yourself. Absolutely.
15:57
Yeah. Well, and that's where, you
15:59
know, I needed to learn. I'm, I am one human.
16:01
I cannot be at 1 booth 1 booth 1 booth 1 booth I, I also AM not a
16:09
robot. So I have to sleep, I have to
16:11
rest, I have to feed myself. And you know, it's funny, I
16:15
think like if you've gone to enough trade shows for for some
16:18
time, you're like, well, duh. You got to, you got to make sure
16:20
you eat, you eat a good breakfast, you know, hey, you
16:23
got to make sure that you plan ahead of time, but you, you
16:26
don't really know until you're in it.
16:28
And like, so I've been also in where I'm just smiling through
16:31
the suffering and I'm just like, we're here, baby.
16:34
Let's, let's, let's just keep smiling, keep going.
16:36
But I am suffering. Comfortable shoes and I always
16:40
bring 2 pairs of shoes to any trade show because you don't
16:43
want to wear the same pair two days in a row just to mix it up.
16:46
That's my big tip for anyone. Nice, nice.
16:49
Talking. You've been very generous with
16:52
your time here this morning and your willingness to chat about
16:56
just the world. When you do go get out of here,
17:01
you get back to Mesquite or you're on the road somewhere.
17:04
You pop into a coffee shop. What are you going to order?
17:08
Oh, I'm, I'm a cappuccino guy. Yeah, I love a cappuccino, and I
17:12
think it says a lot about a coffee shop.
17:17
Cappuccinos is easy enough to mess up, but it's also hard to
17:23
do it really well. Yeah, that's why.
17:26
I don't order them that often because I'm it's riskier.
17:30
Absolutely, but it's also the greatest.
17:33
Story There's something about you, your risk taker.
17:35
Absolutely. Yeah, that's true, man.
17:38
That's true. But it But you know, if you if
17:40
you end up going with the cold brew, you don't know if they're
17:43
using their old coffee for their cold brew.
17:45
I don't know if they're going to be able to pull off the drip.
17:48
Well I don't know if it's been sitting for a while.
17:51
Pour overs, Well man, I know I could make it for 1/4 of the
17:55
price at home. So I don't have a steam wand or
17:58
espresso machine. I'm getting a cafetein.
18:01
I like it. Anything that you wanted to
18:03
share today on what was supposed to be a 5 minute espresso round
18:08
with the audience who might see this someday?
18:11
Yeah, in a sense, I don't know. I think I'm just kind of
18:19
figuring it out. So there is so much to coffee
18:23
that is beautiful. It is really a uniquely
18:29
connecting, wonderfully complex, very hard to make great coffee
18:39
happen. There is so much that goes into
18:41
it. I'm learning about the
18:42
logistics, the origins of farms, the roasters, the barista, the,
18:47
the entire system has to work to create a wonderful experience.
18:52
And so people like me who, who have learned that, hey, I have a
18:57
media skill that I love people. I feel like a duty to be, to be
19:02
like capturing that. And so just as much as I am here
19:06
to run a media company and align myself strategically with brands
19:10
to create content and, you know, capture their work and effort
19:14
and events and parties and shows, I'm just as much feeling
19:20
like a documentarian capturing the story of coffee.
19:23
And I don't always think that my work is important.
19:32
Like sometimes you just feel like you're just doing it to do
19:35
it. And like, man, I, I, and then I
19:38
have moments like where I just got back from the world of
19:44
coffee Dubai. And I didn't know that the
19:47
videos that I shot of Jane Kristen Ruski was going to be
19:52
the last moments of their life. This was them going out on top.
19:55
And I as a media guy who just sees himself frankly kind of
19:59
insignificant at times, it just says, hey, I'm just going to
20:02
show up with my camera and, and capture what's there.
20:05
And full circle, I'm capturing a guy going out on top.
20:10
And this guy is a legend for what he did with resequencing
20:14
coffees to make them plantable in California in the low
20:19
altitudes, with precision irrigation, with masterful and
20:24
strategic placement, 63 farms, 16 different coffees.
20:29
That is a legacy that's going to live on for Jane, Kristen.
20:33
And frankly, I was just showing up to, to just try and bless
20:37
them. And I, I, I didn't know the
20:40
significance of, of, of my work. And so, you know, just continue
20:43
to show up and be be meaningful, say, hey, if if I'm supposed to
20:48
be here, I'm going to there's going to be a way made and I'll
20:51
show up and I'll be in the room. Well said Taka, thank you for
20:55
joining Coffee People. Thank you to Rostar for hosting.
20:58
Us. Yes, absolutely.
21:01
My coffee is empty. Let's go get another one.
21:03
Let's get another one. Awesome bro.
21:04
Thank you. Thank you.
21:53
The.