This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
A shout out to everybody out there who drinks coffee first thing in the morning. Now listen, I am right there with you. Take it from a long time traveler. An important travel skill, especially if you want to go all over the world, is the ability to drink bad coffee. If you can drink Nest Cafe or other instant coffee or any other coffee that's not really that great and be satisfied, you'll have a much easier time in some parts of the world.
I've spent a lot of time sitting on the floor of airports in various parts of the world, brewing up my Nest Cafe or whatever it is. So as I said, a skill of drinking bad coffee is important. However, this doesn't mean by any case, by any standard, that all coffee is the same, quite the opposite. In fact, whenever I have a really good cup of coffee, I always appreciate the difference compared to that cup of Nest Cafe and Kazakhstan or even the overly roasted blend from the ubiquitous mermaid chain. It's not just random parts of the world where there's bad coffee.
A lot of Americans are drinking bad coffee all the time because they don't know any better. So in this story, three childhood friends brew up a quirky, perky performance beverage for firefighters in search of a 48-hour jolt. It's profitable within six months, and they're hand-delivering it to fire stations across California while simultaneously building a brand to sell to anyone. They've done a great job and they've also learned some lessons along the way. So stay tuned.
We're calling it Coffee for Firefighters Brings the Heat. [Music]
There's work, and then there are the tools that actually make work work. For firefighters, one thing that is absolutely essential is coffee, preferably not just any coffee, but coffee that will enhance alert, awake, non-jittery performance for 48 hours, basically the length of a firefighter's entire shift. Northern California firefighters Eli Held and Lorenzo Tezcareño parlayed that need for a long-lasting, high-caffeine jolt into a side hustle of roasting and delivering coffee to fire stations and connoisseurs. With the help of their childhood friend, Doug Walker, director of sales at a local brewery, six-month-old Muertos Coffee is slowly brewing into a wicked small business, combining profits, community service, and tattoo-inspired merch.
This move from firefighting to coffee purveying wasn't instant. The concept had to percolate a bit. Off work for five months with a back injury, Lorenzo found himself jolted by a new idea. At the firehouse, he'd been responsible for the house fund and was charged with picking up the station's kitchen essentials. Typically, that included a Costco run for coffee, although the end result wasn't really lighting anyone's fire.
As he put it, "Firemen are extremely picky "and require a high-caffeine blend." Lorenzo knew that firefighters would be looking for a blend that could keep the crew alert through a two-day shift. That meant a medium roast to avoid the problem of losing caffeine through the cooking process. Finding the right blend was problematic, but sometimes, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. So for Lorenzo, his mission became learning the art of coffee roasting. After getting his buddies, Eli and Doug, involved, they started roasting their own blends at Doug's employer, which was, again, the brewery.
As for the name, Muertos means "dead" in Spanish, and since they sell coffee to wake the dead, they called their new side hustle Muertos Coffee Company. They added some detailed skull designs to their packaging, inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday, and Muertos Coffee Company rose from the grave. Bags, stickers, website design, merch design, shipping, these were all unknowns that had to be explored, hammered out, and in most cases, Googled. Lorenzo says the first step is to think about what you want to accomplish based on what you enjoy. Then once you start, you'll figure it out, so go down the rabbit trail.
Another tip, don't worry too much about messing up some of the details. For Muertos, one of the initial mess-ups was the company website. The initial platform turned out to be too tedious and time-consuming, and the company found out it needed one with integrated shipping software. The shipping is what's needed to put a bag of beans, either their signature 48-hour medium roast or the Leatherhead Blend dark roast, into the hands of home coffee drinkers via USPS delivery. Then there's the line of cool Muertos merch.
Hats, teas, and tanks for men and women with a Dia de los Muertos Mexican-inspired design created by Doug's tattoo artist. With the coffee for fire stations, that is hand-delivered around the state by mentored recruits, mostly young aspiring firefighters who get a chance to participate in Mentored by Muertos, a program that provides in-station visits and networking in exchange for delivering the goods to stations. Each Muertos man kicked in $4,000 to start, and the company is now profitable in its sixth month of operation. They're reinvesting those profits for now and also working on extracting more potential from the merchandise. But money isn't the company's only goal.
The Muertos mission statement is an invitation to take an active role in giving back. That means promoting the firefighting profession through mentoring those would-be firefighters and donating a portion of coffee profits to firefighters injured in a line of duty and victims of fire. The mentoring part includes asking fellow firefighters who order coffee to spend time talking to would-be firefighters delivering the beans. Resume consultation, ride-alongs, networking, and interview training are all part of the services Muertos hopes to offer the next generation of firefighters. And they plan to do this while serving coffee connoisseurs of all kinds.
[Music]
The Muertos Coffee Company. I love this whole concept and branding. Just taking a look at their website, muertoscoffeeco.com, which we will link up in the notes, of course. The 48-hour blend, here's how it's described, our 48-hour line packs a swift kick of energy that is sure to wake the dead. A deadly combination of cherry and plum invades your taste buds while hints of honey lurk in the shadows of your mouth.
It's one sinister cup of coffee that will keep you up in the late hours of the night. That sounds like something I need right now. It's not even the middle of the night, but I just, I like the idea of it. Congratulations to them, a really cool project. I also like this quote from Lorenzo, really short quote.
I thought a lot about it as I was working on the episode. He said, "You don't learn from things you do well." Isn't that interesting? You don't learn from things you do well. I was like, wow, is that true? Like in some ways, I actually think that most of us should be doing the things that we do well.
You're gonna be most successful in life by playing to your strengths. I mean, a firefighter, spends a lot of time training, learning, studying, et cetera, practicing to become the best possible firefighter. I want them to do that well, and it's in the best interest of society. And for them, et cetera, that they do it well for myself also. Like there's lots of stuff that I'm not good at.
And for the most part, I don't have much of an interest in trying to improve those things, 'cause I know that's not how I'm gonna make my mark on the world or even just fulfill my own potential for myself. But I don't think that's what Lorenzo was talking about. When he says, "You don't learn from things you do well," I was like, oh, that's true. Like when I first started traveling, I had this aptitude for it, I really loved it, but I learned through the process of doing it. I wasn't that good at it at first.
And the same with writing or sharing online or any of the businesses I've started. It's actually really fun to kind of jump into that process and you're not good at it at first, but you make this gradual progress. And at first actually you make a lot of progress, which is also enjoyable because you can see, oh, yesterday I was here, and now I'm all the way up here. And tomorrow I'll be even further along. And then as time goes by, your improvements are much more marginal or incremental.
But at first you're like learning a lot. And so it provides this whole like positive reinforcement loop. Maybe that's not what he meant from it, but that's what I took away from it. So I'm just thinking about that a little bit. Like you don't learn from things you do well.
What am I trying to learn right now? Like what are you trying to learn? What are you trying to do right now that's difficult, that's challenging, but you know there's something to it. Like there's a reason why you should be learning this. There's a reason why you should be pushing yourself in some way.
So that's my encouragement that I'll leave you with today, along with a link of course to Muertos Coffee Company. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. That link and anything else I mentioned in the episode will be at sidehustleschool.com/986. Thank you so much for joining me. I'll be back again tomorrow.
Episode 987 coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
