Ryan Alford [00:00:00] Hey, guys, Ryan Alford, welcome to the latest edition of the Radical Marketing Podcast Radcast as we're now being known, still getting used to that Radcast. But I'm excited to be joined today by Henry Wilson, who was the founder and CEO of The Perfect Daily Grind. Henry, really appreciate you coming on. Having so Henry, let's jump right into it. I'd love to just start with what got you started in the business and where your passion for coffee came from. And then we can dove into some more specific things. And I hope first and foremost, I think it's a prerequisite to say I hope you stay safe and sound for all of the worldwide pandemic that's been going on. But I really appreciate you being on and look forward to hearing some of your story. 

Henry Wilson [00:01:22] Well, Foster, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. It's a great privilege to be here with me. So just a little bit of my story with coffee. When I finished University of College in the UK, which I studied geography totally unrelated to my current career, I had a sabbatical period before I started my first job, which is working as a management consultant in London again. And then during that period, I decided that I wanted to go to travel around Central America to learn more about coffee, because in the previous summers I'd always gone back and forth from South America, from Ecuador and Colombia had like an intellectual curiosity and coffee about where I came from, how I was produced, all of the people along the supply chain. But here I felt like I learned a bit more. So I try I basically got to fly and travel on my own from Costa Rica to Guatemala for around four monthsAnd I visited every player on the supply chain in a different country setting. So I spent time with roasters as high level commercial wrestlers to Central America Roasters to different coffee shops, visited different coffee farms, exporters, traders, spent some time hanging out in fertilizer shops, just basically trying to learn a little bit more about cost. And I visited lots of different producers and lots of different settings from very small rural producers to producers who are much closer to the urban areas, to farmers who are incredibly small farms where they only produce coffee to that to five producers where they had an intercropping. And I met one producer in Honduras in a town coffee producing region called My Color and the Color. And I just remember that he took me to his farm and was explaining to me about the quality of his coffee. And he just had endless experiments. He was doing the farm. So, for example, he was going papaya trees because he felt that by the preposterousness, the coffee that would somehow improve the profile of the coffee. He had some issues with drought during the season. So he basically collected coconut husks and had basically. And buried them during the rainy season and then during the dry season, the coffee was more resistant and had these things and I remember asking, how do you share this information about how people know? And maybe more importantly, how the buying habits and these are when they come, I show them. And I said, well, how many people have come this year? About three. And it just kind of stuck with me. Well, there's a lot of things that happen here and in this context of a farm especially that I'm not aware of as a consumer and I'm sure some other splotchy members of the world. And this really adds a lot of value that we're trying to justify to consumers who need to pay additional price. And a lot of things that happened in. And then spending more time in Central America, I ended up going back home to start my other job during the weekends. I went to visit some coffee shops and ask questions, and it was clear that they weren't totally aware of some of the things that I saw. And then similarly, like, they had a lot of information that would make me valuable that the producer wanted to know about some of the people in the coffee producing countries, not so sure about this information, but there was loads of things that the farmers were doing, as well as a lot of interesting insights to roasters. But all the supply chain members, coffee shop owners, places. And then similarly, when I went back and spent time in the UK and there's just a lot of coffee shops, that was sort of the other hand where there were things that they were looking for, the things that they did, which the father wasn't around. So I sort of identified without really realizing it was an information gap. So after work, I used to work at a consultancy company called Accenture Consulting. I used to work at nine. 8, 9 or 7 30. Come to dinner and I work most days to about 11 sometimes, but I am basically writing a blog. And it was never intended to get many viewers, I just kind of gradually, progressively getting down to 5-10 to more, and that's sort of how it started. 

Ryan Alford [00:05:48] That's great, and now it is where you rank yourselves as far as I mean, it appears and you have hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, so you surpass, a couple million a year, if not more. I'm sure it's growing by the day. Where do you rank as far as that knowledge level? Seems like you're in the top three, if not number one. 

Henry Wilson [00:06:13] Yeah, I mean, we're aiming this year. I expect we'll get perhaps eight million page views and several million unique visitors and it's difficult to compare ourselves to other publications. I guess I like to think we're different because we're trilingual in English. So I would say Naki readership and then also in Spanish and Portuguese so that people and the cost of producing countries can read and be on the same page and engage with the material on their own terms as well. Yeah, I mean, I’d say we're starting an industry leader, but we never really comparisons we've always tried to focus on is being data driven, leveraging new technology. So we really focused a lot and have several staff and it's just working on social media and being accessible. So we realized that in order to be accessible, we couldn't just be one language and also to be accessible. We have to have information on the whole supply chain. So not just talking about what's happening at the farm level and what's happening in a coffee shop, but to try and be that voice for the whole coffee industry. 

Ryan Alford [00:07:18] So does this passion from you? It's funny, I enjoy coffee, but, it's the caffeine buzz, but I'm more of a wine connoisseur. It seems like there's some parallels in the grapes being grown in coffee beans. But, whether it's catching a buzz with wine or loving the taste or the caffeine, Joe, where does that passion originate for you? 

Henry Wilson [00:07:45] Well, for me, it was never really about the coffee. A lot of people in that industry had the taste, the sense of a personal coffee, and that's what I was always interested in. Enjoyed a high quality cup of coffee. And as I was exposed to better and better coffee, I loved it. But it was more about the people in the industry. So it was more about spending time in Latin America with different groups across the producers and realizing that there was an opportunity to do something which offered value and purpose. So just by cutting off coffee, we can work towards alleviating some inequities in the supply chain. We can provide free education, we can give a platform for farmers to share that voice. We can not do all the different players. So for me, it didn't have to be coffee. I think it just fell into the coffee because of what happened. And it was always about really the people behind it. And it's an interesting parallel you draw with wine, because when I first started, I admired the wine industry because I was able to attract significantly higher prices for expensive bottles of wine and people do buy high quality wines we value and people are willing to spend that and when you look at the coffee industry, you have to always wonder why can't people make much money on a cup of coffee? And when you first see it, I got really excited about all sorts of things that could be done. So maybe she made the best cup of coffee with the most exotic process, maybe exotic variety, then maybe people would pay for it. But the drinks are sort of seen in two different categories. And then one of the major differences you see in wine is that it is often produced in the countries where the producers themselves have access to improved infrastructure in terms of instructions. And then if you look at wine bottles in the estate or in the farm itself. I mean, coffee. There's all these different people on the chain and the level of risk is completely different, how it's managed. But it's really interesting because I'm always reading and studying wine because it's astounding how we can communicate about and get people to pay so much more for an exceptional glass of wine. And we struggle in the coffee industry. 

Ryan Alford [00:09:58] Brand is a powerful thing. That's a lot of clients. Like Kamus in the US, they can get 20 dollars a glass or a 100 dollars a bottle, for fine wine. But you have a hard time, especially in the states, with Dunkin Donuts on every corner getting more than what, 7 or 8 bucks for a cup of coffee when in reality the process depending on where it's mostly grown, harvested. All that, like you said, is not too unlike the wine industry. And it's really interesting, what it would take to cross that barrier. And I don't know if it gets down to you. It's so complex as if it's just the reality with wine is you can drink two or three bottles and keep going. I guess I don't know if you can drink a glass of coffee or cups of coffee. I guess you could. Some of it might and that simplicity. But talk about the kind of organic growth, with a perfect daily grind kind of going through the side. I see both the education and the information gap. I see that. And then I do see you guys kind of leveraging some of the interest level and the passion points. But I'd love to know the kind of organic growth of the content on the site and the thinking in building out all of the platforms you have. 

Henry Wilson [00:11:35] Well, certainly construction of content, this is a key point for me, and I remember actually listening to Jonah Berger says that was contagious and done presentations and speeches about it on YouTube, but he really talked about contagious content and how to create content, which resonates with an audience. And I remember myself when I was a kid, when I was starting off curious about coffee. I don't know if any of the information available was ever exclusive and not really available to me, I wasn't part of that crowd, so I didn't really feel like I was welcome to join in a lot of that. And then some information was oversimplified. So when we say work on the content, we always always focused on basically providing information that also has practical value. And it's common now when you look at my personal information about how to do this, what is this? When we started, there wasn't that much available in cost. So we really focused on that point of giving the reader something they can take away with and then also focus on the concept of identity. So like we've got major players within the coffee industry and also the supply chain. They take their jobs and mercilessness, at least as conservationists are focusing on those individuals have been what today looks and how can we control which directly appeals to them as opposed to, say, spreading content, which is available to everyone. So we're really focused on that, on that point. OK, let build content for specific targets, mediums, and that led to a lot of growth. And then basically, I mean, the process that we have articles and we are constantly reviewing the analytics. So the match between producing content that we know is popular will get lots of hits and is interesting to our audience. And also balancing that out with the content we want to be known for, because there's certain things which you can write about me guaranteed to be really popular. The long run, that doesn't really deeply resonate with our brand and there's other content which is highly specific, highly specialized, and the people that we adore and use as a reference, but their overall views are lower. But basically we're always monitoring our content. So we monitor the inbound traffic on different social media channels and we've always focused a lot on growing our organic roots through social media. So we were pushing hard on Instagram and people in the industry were really taking it seriously. We're now monitoring the transition to LinkedIn and that seems to be growing more as a platform with a higher organic growth. And we were sort of there when Facebook started. And you can remember that when we approached them on Facebook and like two dollars, you could do something and the reach was insane. We've always monitored. We'll try to try to monitor that all comes down to really studying the identity of our radius, a radius and providing specialist contact for them and then also practical value. So those are the two things. But as you go along, you kind of learn. What works and what doesn't, so, 

Ryan Alford [00:14:35] Growing the business, being a young entrepreneur, what are some like learning lessons, like the high level that you've had growing the business and then maybe diverged into as we were talking pre episode some of the business channels that are kind of growing out of this. So kind of a two part question there. 

Henry Wilson [00:15:01] I mean, my stories, I expect you, but basically when I had the job in London one day, I realized that I really wasn't too happy with that job and I had to do something. And I decided that I'll just make coffee blood and produce amazing content. People respond to us and they'll be amazing. And what basically happened was I left the job in London and had to move back in with my parents and start afresh. And it was really challenging because I realized that for every dollar sign advertising spend, they want to return and every dollar they spend is precious. So I had to really. Wait a while and study and adapt and see, well, what could we add value for our advertisers and also some value for the readers, and it's then, I think, four or five years, maybe a little bit longer, since it's a perfect any kind of since I started it. And the key lessons I learned is that. For us, we're always very value driven in the sense that whenever we take on a new project overall, something new and interesting, we have to have a clear value proposition to explained in one or two sentences about why we're doing what we're doing and why we're doing what we're doing. Because it's very easy when you're developing a new project and that you're excited trying to build something. Really extensive and deep without actually proving that the core value of what we're offering works. And then I guess the other thing is I'm just learning every day about how so? To scale, so because we have. Each year, we've doubled in size as a company in terms of revenue, and we're hiring more and more people and we have to manage that transition from being. A small publication that people are sort of reaching for because we're standing up and people like us and we were doing and probably give us a bit more leeway. And then as you become a larger company adapted to the needs of bigger companies or bigger corporations and what they look for. And then the other thing is, I mostly like continually working to inspire and to keep people happy, because as you grow a company, people's expectations change and obviously you have to give other people a long term career path. And so this is where we are now and this is where we're going to be in a year. And once again, this is where we're going to be spending a lot of time just focusing on the vision of where we want to be and making sure that we're on track. I spent a really significant amount of time just analyze not just where we are now. But where we want to be. So that's just, 

Ryan Alford [00:17:49] That was great, though, I think that's valuable. I always like to add, especially for young Ninth Ward, any entrepreneur at any age, the lessons they've had. And there's always a little bit of similarities. I mean, I'm one myself, but that growth, the growth of the business and managing growth and scaling and what comes with that is always a challenge. And so I love hearing your perspective on that. What are some of the dynamics of the perfect ride that might not be as obvious? The content and the platform that you have for information and your identities that you have. I see that. But what are those? We talked a little bit about this pre episode, but, what are those channels for you guys as far as monetization and where you work with clients? 

Henry Wilson [00:18:51] Yes, so like I say, that as we got more involved and you become more complacent, if you listen to clients often tell you what they want and often it's not exactly what you do. So you sometimes have to adapt to their needs. So we have some we derive revenue through perfect daily grind through a number of different ways, through the publication itself. We have advertising on the platform and we have advertisers for specific reasons. They focus on specific products, speaking to specific audiences and about some of the traditional advertising model with a very strong focus on data. And then we also have a large contingent media, which is the digital media agency. What we do is we provide digital marketing, social media management and a few other services for companies within the coffee sector. And that's always been our expertise is about exclusively and specifically in the coffee sector because we understand the whole supply chain. So companies have probably in the past or previous media agencies mentioned that we really like working with you because, the difference between this type of coffee and of course, we don't explain that to you. So we work within that niche around three years ago. We also started an event to produce a forum which is grown in size in Brazil and Guatemala. And we had been plan this year for Honduras. And the end of that was basically we observed that the world's best coffee events occur in the states and Europe. And why can we build a platform to connect farmers to roasters and offer a world class event in the context of a local context for coffee producers and people in the competition country? And then we get that the first one. And then as we sort of went along, we were to how to how to drive revenue from that. And in the final part of this will occasionally work on consultancy projects with very specific industry needs to be focused on our expertise of the whole supply chain. So we have staff members in El Salvador just don't leave anyone outside the Mexican places. So we understand not only the buyer's perspective, but also the producer's perspective. And that's why I think that is particularly valuable for consultancy work. The projects we do because. Well, often our clients have said that we got the best product, people buy it because it's the best and it's available to pay and say conventional coffee. And then we know that this is what the consumer thinks when I make a purchase. We know that this is how the Rosta would react. This is a Russian Captain America contrasted restaurant back to the U.K. And then similarly, we know that this is what the producers producer's thinking. So our biggest asset really is our expertise along the whole supply chain. 

Ryan Alford [00:21:45] That makes sense an agency or having that is part of it. We have a pretty varied listener group, but I know there's some small business owners in the States. Is there any I know this is a loaded question, but I'm just going to put it out there. Is there any tips that you give for a local, on social media for, a coffee shop or a small business coffee shop? Any broad tips that you give specifically? I know. Get specific to a story and all that. But is there anything that we share that you would counsel someone that might be listening in that field? 

Henry Wilson [00:22:32] Yeah, just think we have different types of coffee companies within the industry and we are seen as working with coffee roasters or smaller companies and. What I can say is that it seems obvious, but it's about being authentic and projecting your values and who you are, because I think especially in the coffee industry, when certain things are very cool. So there are some industry times and industry buzzwords and maybe even new trends that people want to get involved because everyone's doing it. But for long term success. And actually building brand loyalty is about understanding and defining exactly what you are and who you stand for and projecting that message. And then the other thing that works for the clients is a beacon system. We always have people when they say, oh, I didn't say that it didn't work, they said, well, how long? About two weeks. But is that well, with the perfect online publication for two years to make it, even though that's about that process of communicating that it's a long term effort. And then the other thing is also being relevant. So that kind of intensity, but really being relevant to our audience. So if on social media, you must do lots of things with your country and it might be. Important to you, we need to identify, like, what is your audience want and what do they come to you for? Because I think it's easy as a company, especially a company, like everything you do is so interesting and exciting, you want to show people because you were out of it. You have to also appreciate that. Maybe. If you're a coffee shop, people come to you for coffee when it comes to you. Other things or do you want me to identify what was your. Recall relevance. 

Ryan Alford [00:24:14] I love it and you being on the agency side, I can relate to many of those the same discussions with clients, especially on the consistency side. Everyone thinks so short term and everybody wants it yesterday. And they think that the viral nature of content is created this false expectation that every post is going to get X number of likes or it's going to if I post for three months straight, I'm definitely going to grow revenue by seven percent, just not realistic without a long term strategy and sticking with it, because what happens is they get deflated and. They think, well, it's not working but they have a false expectation of working. 

Henry Wilson [00:25:05] Yeah, it's about defining the expectations and then define what success looks like for a new start, and it's like what, what, what, what success looks like in a year's time you're going to be with this child. So then you got to identify where to work towards, because sometimes you say, well, actually, we just want to generate sales. So that's just not that important to us. We want to raise awareness of this particular project we're doing. But like, consistency is something that is important. And then for us. So obviously that's a balance, but it is attention to detail. So we want to make sure that everything is grammatically correct, like we use the right images because it's easier. And I think that when everyone's very busy, like, well, I just find any other niche. But every time you do a post, you sort of exposing your brand to the whole. And you have to be delicate, and I think there's an opportunity as well, because, I mean, as a young guy who just started listening publication with no background in the coffee industry, just through social media, with a strong focus in this regard to begin with, I was able to have a totally global reach and access to social media. And you have to just use it and connect with people and take advantage of it as a tool. 

Ryan Alford [00:26:20] And you practice what you preach, because I did see the daily grind has, like you've posted 7000 times. So, I thought I was doing well with like fifteen hundred, which is you, because the average person even thinks that they're doing it a lot, has a few hundred posts, maybe seven thousand is quite the dedication. 

Henry Wilson [00:26:46] Is that just any English or Spanish? 

Ryan Alford [00:26:48] I think it was just English. There's a rap group in the US walking, talking at Target Walking. So, walking like you are talking and you're doing it. 

Henry Wilson [00:27:10] That's an amazing thing. As a matter of time, yeah, I’m pleased to hear that as well. Another thing as you grow and you got more followers. So we're a news publication and we have around 180000 on Instagram. It becomes a challenge because as you get more followers, the ink becomes more difficult to build an authentic relationship with followers and also have high engagement because the algorithms are consistently changing. So what we really focus on now is his comments and resolves. I must have acted as a messenger, someone else. So when we started, it was like, how many followers can we get? It is amazing that 10000 followers and that's another thing to talk about with clients is the. Often people will say what we really want is engagement. But after a while, what they really want is lots of followers. Yeah. So we have to sort of identify, like, what is the most important thing for this particular time? Whether they want to be known for. How do they want to be seen in the industry? 

Ryan Alford [00:28:08] Yeah. What's your business like a B2B company if you're selling certain businesses that only need five sales a month because of volume. It's B2B, but you don't need many followers. But if you're a high volume sales and. More reach and more it's just so variable depending on the business, right? 

Henry Wilson [00:28:33] Yeah, you're actually right. It all depends on what you're doing and your client base like, and there are different platforms on that from different for different people in the industry and some some pretty much a mess. Miss Nathan is like a resurgence illington. Oh, yeah. And that's offered opportunities to speak with and connect with different people. So my dad, for example, doesn't really use Instagram. He doesn't try one post, but he likes to think that he uses LinkedIn. And he can. And so it's all about yeah. Each platform has a different audience as well. 

Ryan Alford [00:29:11] As I can close out towards here towards the end. But is what's, what are you seeing as the impact of baby, both your business and maybe the coffee industry as a whole with the whole pandemic. I mean, what's been your perspective of the impact of that? 

Henry Wilson [00:29:35] Was as a coffee publication, tons of pages. We've seen a rise because I think a lot of people are dedicating more time to education, probably learning, and people have some more free time because they're at home. Yeah, from a business perspective. So most of the clients we work with, we try to negotiate extended contracts. It's very unusual that we have one off. So a lot of time. But the concern so much isn't now, but is that when it comes to contract renewal at the end of this year or beginning early next year, what's that gonna look like? So what I said to retainment. Well, yes, it's the team that we work with that right now we've taken this time to focus more inwardly. So looking at what core values do we offer as a company? Well, our assets and how can we leverage that to perhaps create new revenue streams. So, as I mentioned before, we have a diversified portfolio of revenue streams, but really focusing on our audience that we have. We have a really high number of cities in our publication on a daily basis. And what do they look for? We're giving them special. Yeah, so we're working on a couple of new projects for those things and then also improving my brand. So rather than say to the start to this comment, I really don't have much to do. Because we also traveling a lot less as well. So even if I work, load is exactly the same. Well, I mean, I'm supposed to train a bird like five times over the last few months and have messed up this thing. So I find myself in more time, but really came in the chamber. This is a long term vision of what we're doing. So even if, say, you finally have more time to do that, we can work on improving our brand. So we launched the publication in Portuguese. And for example, for the media agency, we had a very poor website for that, so we basically rebuilt the website for that, for the event the media made the website. So also work on internal changes. But I think, like when you're in a company, you sort of get used to having always having concerns and things to worry about and things about us, even when things are going well. And for us as a company, as motorcycle. Well, everything was happening, so basically doing were doing a little ways of diversifying our revenue in the future and leveraging our assets and then in respect to the coffee industry is more like a general idea. So I think in the coffee industry, like we've seen a big growth over the last few years of the independence, coffee shops, independent roasters and even the rise of the independent artisan coffee chain. And a lot of those coffee shops, coffee businesses specialized in selling their premium costs that can cost more to produce for the farmer, and hence people pay additional prices for those. And I think what initially happened, there was a concern that obviously these coffee shops closed and restaurants closed and hotel space was going to be in a drop in demand. And what's going to happen isn't going to affect these smaller, exclusive, high quality courses or is it going to affect the lower value, the less high quality, more commercial presence and what we saw was that, I think overall consumption of content has fallen, but you also have to bear in mind that every year we've had incredible both within the specialty coffee sector and global public consumption as well. And then there's also been an insurgence of people brewing coffee at home, and when people go at home, I would say it's a big opportunity because before a lot of people sort of saw buying quality coffee at home is not a priority. And now people are looking for that affordable luxury. They're looking for something to be for how they can improve the coffee. So we've seen an increase in demand for quality coffee at home and I just went to the supermarket or the grocery store the other day and I was analyzing the offering of coffee. And I said it's even over this period. A lot of the supermarkets, more, I guess you could say, mainstream, that counterweight to the general consumer offering much better coffee. And then I think that obviously there has been a drop in demand in coffee shops, but the businesses can look at it if possible. So hopefully that opened up a new revenue stream through the government presence, which is only going to grow in the future. And that will exist even when things go back to normal. So they have a man in the U.K., it was discussed early July. Restaurants and hotels and restaurants and cafes are opening again. And I think it's just going to gradually adjust. I think we have seen a few coffee companies that were struggling financially before Covid say they've really struggled even more because it's been the final. A nail in the coffin, but. A lot of companies are going to come out with a diversified revenue channel, and I think even Starbucks is talking about how to change a little bit. They're closing some of our stores by an increased focus on trying to get coffee. And it'll be interesting to see how it changes and the result of this pandemic. 

Ryan Alford [00:34:45] And have you guys been working, like with clients to get to e-commerce at all with your clients? Have you seen a rise in that? That's been huge with a lot of our growth. We were doing a lot of it before, but that's been a big growth segment through all of this for us. And you mentioned the diverse stream. I think that's what we're relating to. But have you guys been working on that yourselves or with your clients? 

Henry Wilson [00:35:13] Yeah, people are purchasing stuff more through social media directly like Instagram shots, and people are actually looking for the shortest route, actually, to buy a product. Definitely an increase. And interesting that some clients I think were just doing very well. It didn't really bother with it instead of like something they had to do that was on their list at some point. But obviously now they had to take it more seriously. And I think it's interesting as well, because we work in lots of different places and connecting with people is that it's been very easy for companies so that you can United States to scale their e-commerce and to increase the number of sales. But in other countries where the infrastructure doesn't exist, people are speaking to a coffee shop the other day from a coffee roaster. And they're saying, frankly, like people aren't used to buying stuff online. We don't have a strong local presence in terms of FedEx, DHL. So there are other other challenges. But this has forced local companies to innovate and to adapt. And they're going to have, as a result, the pandemic, a far more improved infrastructure and transport network. 

Ryan Alford [00:36:21] I tell people it’s a snowball that was running downhill anyway, the move to e-commerce, but it's the whole pandemic's kind of sped up a lot of things on the innovation side, 

Henry Wilson [00:36:38] It depends on the product you're selling, like in coffee. I think that's also a big space for people to go out and grab a cup of coffee and socialize. But like I said, an additional revenue stream has been created which will grow. And that's a huge market as people start drinking. Better quality African police source coffee at home, then that can have a huge impact on the industry and on the large coffee grounds. 

Ryan Alford [00:37:06] Well, Henry, I really appreciate your time. A lot of good insights, both on, every day the grind of the industry as a whole and just being transparent about business and entrepreneurship and all that. So I really appreciate your time and coming on the podcast. 

Henry Wilson [00:37:25] Well, thanks very much. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about this podcast, and I'm sure you'll hear from me extremely sad. And I'll keep listening. 

Ryan Alford [00:37:35] All right, guys, thanks again to Henry Wilson. And that's all for today's episode of the radical marketing podcast. Come follow us on Instagram at Radical Underscore Results or radical dot company online. We'll see you next time.