Tyler Ornstein: Starting a National Coffee Retail Business at Age 14

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I got a kick out of Burton with awesome. All right, Tyler Orenstein, thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you? I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me, uh, Damien and, uh, I’m really looking forward to. Our conversations, because, you know, as a entrepreneur yourself, you can understand the struggle and I’m really looking forward to having a good conversation.

Yeah. Those are kind of the best topics to touch on is not only the success stories, but the ups and downs. And, um, as you and I were talking offline, You have a product that I’ve bought. So I’m kind of, kind of interesting that where our paths have aligned. So before we get into that whole backstory, I did forget to tell you before you hit record, but I start with two questions.

So you are just getting thrown to the wolves, just getting they’re easy questions. All right. So question. Question number one is, um, your usual intro. What’s your elevator pitch. So who are you, Tyler, and what are we going to learn from you today? So my name is Tyler Orenstein. I’m the creator of the world’s first and only acid free coffee.

So that’s copied it. Doesn’t give you heartburn, indigestion, upset, stomach smooth, no bitter bite. As we like to say. All right. And the question number two is a bit of an icebreaker. You can showcase some personality and answer as serious, or as jokingly as you’d like, Tyler, what do you suck at? Oh boy, that’s a great question.

I love that. Um, well, I can tell you that I suck at not knowing things that I don’t know.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think humility is the most important thing in the entrepreneurial’s life. When someone makes a mistake, they have two options. They can either act like it didn’t exist. And not have the knowledge, uh, or they can go, wow, what a major mistake. And, uh, I need to address that and I need to become.

A better person because I’ve made that mistake. I, I like to use the word pot committed. So if you’re playing poker and you’ve got, you know, two, three off suit and you’ve got, you know, an open straight on the table and you just go pot committed and someone has ACEs, obviously you’re not going to win. And so sometimes it’s a good idea to just be a little bit more refrained and say, Well, let me think more about this idea.

Let me think more about what’s going on or it doesn’t make sense to me. And those are the successful people. I mean, I have to say that most entrepreneurs are crazy. They’re they’re not mentally stable. And that reason why is because they think they’re going to lose it all tomorrow. And if you have that mentality, then you’re a little bit more conservative about your success.

How long have you been an entrepreneur? 16 years. And have you always had kind of the, the stable approach to, um, you know, rationalizing problems or did you go through in your early stages of an entrepreneurial or you the irrational one as well? There was one. So there’s one thing I don’t, I don’t do drugs.

I very rarely drink alcohol, but there was one thing that I absolutely adore and love, and it’s just my hobby and that’s cars. And so when I was 16 years old, I had just the amount of money to buy at the time, my dream car. And it was still, still an amazing car, but I bought an MP3, a BMW, and you know, I was the talk of high school, but, um, It just, it really solidified to me that if I work hard for something I can, I can deserve it and I can earn it.

I can get it. And I mean, do I do, do I do stupid things with money? No, of course not. I think it’s extremely important that you need to be as most fiscally responsible with your money as possible. But on the other hand, Um, when you worked so hard for it. So I worked three years for, for that car and I feel like you need to treat yourself at some point in your business when it’s, when it’s viable.

Now, did I kind of beat the, a buzzer on it and kind of, you know, Jumped on before the gun. Yeah. Yeah. I could have bought, you know, an ADB car and, and, uh, I could’ve, I could’ve been a little bit more conservative with my money, but. On the other hand, it also gave me the drive and the, and the, uh, value to go and be more successful because I want a nicer thing.

So it’s, it’s kind of a catch 22. Do you be conservative to a point where you don’t even enjoy your value of what you’re working for? Or do you take every single dollar that you earn and blow it on things that are not going to be a value to you? So I think. I think entrepreneurs need to understand that there’s a much needed, um, uh, gain in yang in business.

You have to, you have to at least do something that is, uh, enough value so that you can get some thing in return, but don’t overspend. You rate yourself. Do you have an example of where your line, uh, we’ll call it your stupid line, uh, would be versus treating yourself? Uh, what are the types of things that cross your mind that you would like to buy, but you rationalize them and say, no, I’m not going to ours.

Met Fred. I walked in, I’m a big Mercedes guy. I’ve got, I’ve got three Mercedes now. And I walked into the Mercedes for service. You know, it’s just that, like you walk in there and you see your dream car sitting there and you’re like, kind of got an 800 credit score, fricking owning a business. I got a beautiful house and, uh, the cars, you know, $200,000 and you’re just like, uh, so they didn’t do it.

And then you got to know. Oh, so four Mercedes is the stupid line. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, I would say that third Mercedes, um, you know, start evaluating your life. Right. Uh, but no, I, I think, I think that’s the thing is like, if you’re going to work hard, which I do, I put in, I put in, you know, Even to now, I used to put in a hundred hour work weeks and I put in about 40 to 60 hour rates.

But if you’re going to work hard, if you’re going to burn the candle on both ends, there’s got to be some breaking point where you go, okay, I need to have my play toy. Like I need to have something that’s gonna get me. You know why I’m doing this? And there’s a lot of things for a lot of like, I would love to own a boat.

Uh, someday. I mean, I think that would be, I’ve got some friends that own some, some power boats when you go to the lake and it’s immensely amount of fun, but again, you know, why are, you know, priorities, I’d rather buy more inventory so I can sell more product then, um, then buy a boat and leverage myself that way.

It’s just, you got to figure out your, again, I could keep going back to, you got to figure out your ying and yang and, uh, Oh, I link a lot of entrepreneurs that are very successful. Bill. You know, look at, look at Elon Musk. He’s slept literally on the floor for four and a half years. Building payback. So, what do you think about when you, so you’ve gone from a hundred hour workweeks to 40 or 50?

What crosses your mind when you’re having a conversation with another entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur, do you encourage them to do the a hundred dollar grinds or do you say, uh, you know, it’s gonna take its toll on you and say not to do it? I will say this very bluntly. If you do not put the time into it, you will not get the success.

So put it in until you get to, until you get to that, uh, level of satisfaction. Yeah. All right. So let’s, let’s talk about your product, you know, um, we’ve talked that you have a successful business. Um, you touched on, on your intro, let’s dig in deeper. What is your business? So again, created the world’s first organic acid free coffee.

So my father at the age of 14 years old came to me and said, what’s the second largest commodity item in the world. And I said, I don’t know. I went to Google on Google in the world, and it told me that it was coffee and the first is petroleum. And so, uh, back then it was in the billions. Now it’s in the trillions.

Um, You know, to even have that word come out of your mouth is mind boggling. That’s a thousand billion. So it’s just, I don’t even know where to think about that. But most industries sit around in hundreds of millions to billions, this isn’t the trillions. So, uh, When you look at that, and then you find out that you’re the world’s first and only in a 1.1 or 1.6 trillion back in 2018 and this year alone.

And since coronavirus, they’ve actually seen a 15% increase in the commodity because people are staying at home, drinking more coffee, it’s normal, how it’s going to be. Um, but then. As we talked off air Damien, you have a stomach related issue and you found Tyler’s cough please, before even all of this happened.

And so that’s what I love about doing, um, My job is my job is to support you and millions of other Americans that suffer from stomach related issues that can’t drink coffee anymore. And so when we provide a solution to that, it’s amazing. So just a little background story. When I, before COVID, I would fly around the country and I would do speeches, um, and people would come up to me after the speeches and say, oh my God, You know, 14 years old door-to-door and a bicycle.

And now you’re in a thousand plus stores and Amazon walmart.com and eBay, 40 other retailers that are online that sell our product. And they say, I have this great idea and blah, blah, blah. And the first thing I say is, does it help? And they look at me kind of like doe-eyed and they go, what, what do you, what do you mean?

Does it help? Does it help? Yeah. Okay. Well then sell that. See, the problem is, is people don’t understand that if you can’t help someone or a solution to a problem, chances of you becoming successful are, are very, very low. I won’t say they’re there. No, but also that they’re extraordinarily low when you can actually help someone and support someone.

Um, that’s when you can monetize it and that’s when you can become successful. Yeah. Do you, is your explain the importance? Uh, you know, a lot of our listeners are obviously going to be coffee drinkers, um, and I’m, I’m sure some of them are on the same page as what we’re talking about and the value of having an acid free coffee.

But for those that aren’t familiar with, Why they should even care about an acid free option. Can you kind of explain what the benefits of your product are? Yeah, absolutely. So there was a study done in 2016 by the frozen colitis foundation in north America, that 50 million Americans suffer from Sonic related issues.

Now in the morning, there is a ritual that everyone has. They wake up. And if they’re coffee drinkers, the first thing that comes to their head is coffee for me, for you, for the rest of our coffee drinkers out there. And so when they go to make their coffee, what they’re doing is they’re essentially brewing a low pH that they’re going to adjust in their body.

Now. Another study was done by the Harvard medical Institute, uh, and journal and also web MD. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this because there’s called an alkaline diet for a reason, scientists, doctors, pretty much anyone with a brain or a PhD has said that if your body goes into an acidic state, It will have inflammatories inflammatories Harbor cancer cells.

So this is why we’re seeing such a huge cancer pandemic in America is because people are not having diets that are alkaline. Now there’s few and far between, and I’m glad it’s getting bigger and better, but there’s a lot of people out there that want to just. By their fast food on their way to work, or they are willing to eat.

Non-organic because it’s cheaper. Well, your body is your temple and you need to invest into it more than anything else in the world. Because if you don’t have your health, then you don’t have your life and you don’t have your life, you know, there’s no reason to live. Right. So I tell people that above anything is helpful.

You can’t, you can’t love God. If you don’t have your health, you can’t love your spouse. You can’t love your kids. If you don’t have your health, you can’t love your business. You don’t have your health. So, you know, if you don’t have your health, you only have one problem. Point being Tyler’s coffees is that solution.

And again, Damien, you want to tell the listeners what you think about the product. Yeah, it’s been great. I mean, I don’t, I don’t notice any difference in taste versus, you know, like you, you, I imagine what a lot of people think is like, okay, well, if it’s acid free, know it’s going to have like a negative aspect that comes with it, right?

Face taste. Is it, you know, I throw on my cream or whatever else, and it’s just as good as all the others. Yeah. So yeah, that’s, that’s what we that’s, you know, that’s the reason why we we’ve built this product is because people that have stomach related issues or modalities, they can’t drink coffee anymore where the solution.

And just to clarify, it’s interesting. Um, I had bought Tyler’s product way before him and I had ever met. It just became a coincidence that, you know, through, through his team, they had reached out and said, Hey, you know, here’s Tyler, here’s his story. And I recognized his blue packaging. And I said, I got that stuff.

I got that stuff in my pantry is so let’s go a little bit further on the asset clarification. So is it literally acid-free or does it metabolize differently? So it doesn’t produce as much. So we don’t bloom the tannic and lipid acids. Now tannic liquid acids are used in for those censuses. Um, You’ve heard of tannins in wine, um, and, and lipids are, you know, kind of the same thing, but they’re not found in wine they’re found in other plant matter when you don’t bloom those two acids, it doesn’t react to the GI tract.

So does, does our coffee neutral? Yes. But is there other assets involved in the coffee? Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s not, I mean, Are other acids that are not harmful to you. People think people think of black and white way too much. And that’s fine. I’m not against that. But on the other scale is, you know, people say, oh, you can’t have this because it has that side effect.

Well, Not necessarily. So you can have acids, you just can’t have negative acids because the negative acids cause inflammation. So you can have good acids like amino acids, but you can’t have tannin and liquid ass, bad acids. So, I mean, it’s, it’s kind of a catch 22 on that. Yeah. So your, your dad kind of came up with this concept.

So did he name it Tyler’s coffee or did you. Um, so the story goes that we were trying to figure out what the name is. And, uh, I kinda just was like, well, why not? Tyler’s. My coffee. So I was 14. Uh, so you gotta have got to give me a little bit the credit on that. I mean, uh, 14 year olds are pretty, they’re pretty self-involved but, uh, yeah, I mean, Aye.

Aye. Aye. I will say this. Do I regret it? No. Do I think it should change maybe, but on the other hand, I think people really respect that. I’m the one that signs every bag of Tyler’s coffees. I mean, you have a bag of coffee, but I just, you know, to your, to your listeners, I signed every bag because I enjoy it.

I endorsed my brand so much. So now I’ll sign my name to it. And, uh, uh, I take it very personal when, when someone is consuming my coffee, because it’s very, um, it’s a personal experience. I mean, coffee has always been found to be a connector and I like connecting. Good coffee to good people. And, um, I don’t know.

It just stopped. I’ll I’ll I’ll make 14 year old. Um, Tyler, Phil, uh, feel a little better and I’ll give you some company with 24 year old Damon. Um, so when I founded my company, I was one step ahead, a 14 year old Tyler in the fact that I didn’t want to name it, Damon. But I wasn’t so far ahead that I still didn’t want to put my stamp on it.

So my company is still the legal holding entity of SEO national, but the legal name is D a B empire because I was smart enough not to put my name, but not smart enough that I didn’t want to put my initials. And then about a year, I was like, yeah, I need to, I need to change that. So I’m right there with 14 year old, Tyler.

Yeah. I mean, when, when you name it, when you name it yourself, it’s, it’s a, it’s an interesting combination because, you know, Jeff basis, Amazon have nothing similar. Right. You know, Jeff invented Amazon, but he didn’t call it basis.com. He called it Amazon, uh, Elon Musk, Tesla, you know, there’s no correlation there.

I think it’s a, it’s an homage to Nikolai, but, um, Even names names are an interesting, they’re an interesting thing. I think if you’re going to be as personal or as intimate as coffee, there’s Pete’s coffee. There’s a couple other personal names to coffee. Um, Joe’s coffee was gone by a Jo. Uh, so I mean, the coffee’s a little bit different, but, uh, yeah, I think, I think names have a lot of presence.

And if you name something, uh, with the, with the catchy, uh, you know, aspect, I think it, I think it will sell in the market. Yeah. Well, why don’t we talk about a little bit of your entrepreneurial journey. So where you from day one, as a teenager in behind the scenes, helping with the company, or as you grew into adulthood, then you kind of took a more responsibility.

No dude, it was me, myself and I, my father did one thing. He brought me the idea and the concept and the product. So it was legit years. Yeah, I did all the branding. I did all the retail. I did all the bikes. I put some miles on my bike. Uh, built the website myself, uh, went into grocery stores and promoted it.

I remember walking into my local grocery store, which we still have. Phenomenal grocery store actually, it’s like better than the whole foods called Asia is here in Arizona and they’re 14 store chain. And that was the first chain I have. Uh, we still have them and we love them. And, uh, the, the lady, um, who is the manager still, and, you know, she said, Tyler, everyone likes the coffee.

They think it’s a great idea. Uh, do you have a $3 million, uh, underwriter insurance policy? And I was like, $3 million. No. Well, come to find out, the insurance company provides a $3 million umbrella. It’s not going to cost you $3 million. So, uh, but again, to get fun, I mean, you had to build an LLC. I had to learn that I learned everything.

This is all firsthand knowledge. This isn’t like, you know, it wasn’t just dropped into my lap with a nice raw red bow on it. It was, it was, uh, Bill. It was like, you know, all these puzzle pieces and you had to build the erector set or the Lego set. How, how far into building the company? Did you finally feel like you had a sense of stability and growth tomorrow?

Right from the beginning. When did you get past, did you get past the majority of your entrepreneurial insecurities? Tomorrow. So it’s not there. It ever will be. I don’t think it ever will be. I mean, when, when you get comfortable is when you get complacent, when you get complacent, when you start losing.

All right. Uh, let me ask you differently then what, um, what have you learned through the journey that maybe you can give a sense of, uh, you know, a silver lining for early stage entrepreneurs that are, are just barely starting the puzzle pieces that you’ve already kind of gone through. You know, I’ve been doing this podcast where, and it’s funny because I watched the, the host reactions.

Um, I’m the one guy that’s so real. That kinda is a brazen. Uh, asshole. I never gonna sugar coat it. Look you’re either an entrepreneur or you’re not. You’re either going to jump off that thousand foot cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down, or you’re going to hit ground. You’re just going to flat.

There’s there’s really? No, there’s really no. You know, serve two masters. If you want a side gig, I’m on, I’m on a hundred percent on board with that. I think it’s a cool thing. Um, my conference actually epitome of the giga, uh, community. I mean, she, she runs for X. She has a side website and she does a fiver on the side for other companies.

I mean, she’s literally that giga and she’s a millennial. I mean, it’s, it’s the epitome of, of giga. I’m of I’m of a different mindset that either you’re going to invest in a hundred percent into your business and eat, drink, sleep literally, uh, your business, or you’re just going to, to, to run it as a side gig and kind of let it run in the background.

And I really I’ve thought about it long and hard Damien and I seriously cannot figure out. How you can serve two masters. So either you’re going to drop everything or drop your business. You’re going to drop your cushy job. And you’re going to jump two feet into entrepreneurial-ism or, uh, it’s going to be a side gig until you do that.

Then it’s going to still say a psychic now because of COVID people have been laid off. So this is a perfect time to reinvent yourself. And if you want to become an entrepreneur, now now’s the time to do it. Um, but. I have to say, it’s, it’s a cold, hard world out there. And it’s crazy right now. I don’t know if you’ve kept up with media, but it’s absolutely asinine crazy.

Um, it’s scary. And I, I don’t really have any, any silver lining. I mean, it’s, it’s a wild, wild, wild west out there. Yeah. So what’s next for you then with Tyler Scobie?

Yeah. So I told him, I told all my employees every morning, I say, good morning, everyone. When they say morning, Tyler is, I guess what they say, what SAP is every morning. And I said, unless we make more business today than we did yesterday, you all don’t have jobs. So is this. Has it always been that morning rally or more so because of COVID always, we always have to make more money.

Then yesterday and I’ve pushed my team to think that right now. Do we always do it? Yeah, I would say we’re, we’re very, we’re very driven on making more sales, the more coffee we sell, the happier my offices, the happier everyone is in the company, because they’re all ran on commission. Um, and they do very well.

I mean, we, we have very good salary. Um, positions for Tyler’s coffees, but the point is is you can’t take a sideline to being a passive leader. A passive leader does not get things done, uh, an over aggressively leader or quote it’s higher. It doesn’t get things done either. So there’s gotta be a fine balance.

Um, but they understand that they understand that we have to make more sales than yesterday. And we like to put those numbers up. I mean, we have, we have some games I give out prizes for whoever’s the top sales of that week. I mean, I’m really, really, really emphasized that we need to sell more, uh, today than we did yesterday.

You have that mentality. It’s not a negative mentality. It’s not like, oh, he, Tyler thinks he is. You going to, you know, tell people what to do. Uh, it’s just, you guys are in the same ball game that I’m in, you know, like we’re in it together. We’re a team. And if one person fails that team, then everyone else fails.

You’re only as strong as your weakest link. And so, um, I’m a big believer of, of, uh, hire slow fire fast. What’d he say to the people that say that. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t expect anybody other than themselves to care as much about their businesses. I would say that that’s absolutely right statement. So how do you balance encouraging your team to play at the same level that you do knowing that you no one will ever care as much as you do?

Like, are there incentives beyond financial or how do you get them committed? Other ways, if any. Um, listen, money, money speaks, volumes, money talks. It’s just what it is. We live in a society that if we don’t have money, we don’t have a life. So money is a big factor for me too. Uh, but I think, I think it’s important to let your community in your business, the people that actually work tirelessly for you.

Um, to give them, uh, you know, a good working environment. I mean, they can play their own music. They can wear their own clothes within. No reason, meaning can’t come in with like yoga pants and sweats. But, um, there’s, there’s, there’s a very, there’s a very good culture here at Tyler’s. And I wanted to make sure that Tyler’s was a very enjoyable work environment.

And as far as I know, we’ve done a great job and everyone really at the end of the day says let’s do better tomorrow. Yeah. Um, do, do you have one facility, like is the whole team in one in the same place? Yeah, but then we have our fulfillment offsite. We have our call center outside, so yeah. Cool. Well, everybody Tyler Orenstein want to say, thanks for jumping on learning from others.

Want to give you the last few moments to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you and push contacting Beau? Yeah, absolutely. So, um, for everyone out there, uh, until the end of 2020, You can go to Tyler’s coffees.com that’s Tyler’s with an ask coffees with an s.com use promo code Tyler 2020 that’s Tyler, T Y L E R two zero two zero.

All our case.

Yeah. And I have to say that before.

I appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Thank you. Appreciate it.