All my life I have known what I want. My life’s goal was to be my own boss. When I was thirteen years old, I decided to pursue my aspiration. I told my dad of my plan to be an entrepreneur and he supported me completely. He himself had caught the entrepreneurial bug and I know he is responsible for passing it on to me. I have always looked up to my dad and I knew I could make him proud. So a couple days after my revelation, my dad asked me the question that would shape my future, “Tyler, what are the two biggest commodities in the world?” I had no idea. He told me to go look it up and I rushed to my computer to find that the first was oil and the second was coffee. We decided that oil was a little of my reach but coffee was just waiting for me to sell it.
When I was in eighth grade, I officially became an entrepreneur. My friends and I were all playing sports and going to movies, but little did they know, the second I got home I was working to sell the world’s largest commodity. Soon, they began to realize I was not your average teenager. I was working to create myself a coffee empire.
Being a student, an athlete, and a coffee entrepreneur has made a dramatic impact on my life. I immediately acquired self-discipline; a quality strongly pursued by high school students was a necessity for my business. I was always very outgoing, however now, I was learning to mold my knack for talking into a foundation for my business tactics. My public speaking skills have skyrocketed. As they say, practice makes perfect.
Business started out slow. Being a thirteen-year-old entrepreneur, it was not the immediate flow of cash I had hoped for. I learned I would have to actually work for my money. My dad had a friend in the coffee business and one day he presented me with silver packs of coffee that had been roasted in Bosnia. I agreed to sell them and set off door to door with my bike and a backpack full of coffee. The first couple sales were hard. I was a little shy until I realized these adults were in no way threatening. After I sold the first two cases, my dad’s friend realized I was serious and had ten more cases shipped. I continued going door to door and he agreed to provide the financial banking. With those cases of coffee began the company we all know today as Tyler’s Coffee. The support I received from my dad and his friend was the foundation of my company.
When you begin a business at age thirteen, you must learn customer relations very quickly. I would go door to door on my bike with a backpack full of coffee. When people answered the door, I would shyly introduce myself and tell them about my coffee. I learned that these adults are not threatening and that gave me confidence in business and to have customers coming back. One customer ask me a lot of questions and I did not have all the answers. That experience with him gave me time to think, I need to know every answer to a question about coffee. Customers have really helped me out in business. Even with all this help from my customers and my parents, my business grew slowly.
The next four years I grew and matured immensely. Unfortunately, my company did not do the same. It was at that point that I realized I needed to be successful to do so. I immediately set off breeding my business skills. I had prior experience talking to adults, but I trained myself to sound professional. I needed to make sure I was not underestimated due to my age. I researched and studied my project to make sure I could answer any question precisely and in detail. This revival of my passion for entrepreneurialism were vital to who I am today and the success of my business.
I attended my first Food Trade Show, which was a turning point for my young career. I was now sixteen years old, and faced with the challenge of marketing my product to the experienced buyers at the trade show. They demanded perfect professionalism, which I was still striving to accomplish. The first trade show was an experience; the second was sure to be a grand triumph. I realized samples were the way to the buyer’s heart. While they sampled, I was able to amaze them with facts about the product. All this work was still not paying off to my liking, however practice makes perfect.
The second I got home after the food trade shows, I knew I needed to get my name out there. My first thought was paying for advertising. Luckily, free promotion was thrust my way; a reporter from the Arizona Daily Star contacted me. He interviewed me and put my story in the paper. It was the exact type of exposure I needed. My online business flourished. My next step was to expand the scope of my story nation-wide and get my company’s name in the limelight. My father and I contacted one of his associates who was the CEO of a major media campaign company. We flew out to Virginia and negotiated a contract that would the story of Tyler’s Coffee into a magazine that would be distributed to 10,600 newspapers across the nation.
With the 2006 holiday season came the most wonderful gift of all, a spot on the shelf of an exclusive, high-end Arizona grocery store chain. One fine December day, I called the general manager of the local AJ’s Fine Foods. She told me to bring by some samples. I jumped on the opportunity and it worked. She loved it. Unfortunately, I received another real business world slap in the face when she informed me I would need liability insurance policy. The good news was it was the real deal. My company was becoming more and more legitimate and while known by the second.
The success at this store in Tucson has been phenomenal. So much so that we are now in every branch of AJ’s throughout Arizona and they continue to reorder. We sold more coffee in a month than any other new coffee company found in AJ’s. The store manger informed me that AJ’s is making a sizeable profit, which is exciting because it is so reasonable for such a revolutionary product. We at Tyler’s Coffee believe that we not only compare to other coffees, but also belittle them. We plan on demonstrating this at AJ’s and making our coffee a household name worldwide. We do however, plan to remember our roots therefore I feel that we are going to have a lasting relationship with AJ’s in the future.
For now we plan on continuing to advertise our product and gain worldwide prestige. News USA provides us exposure to the national media. In February, our first article went out in their magazine to 10,600 newspapers. The response was phenomenal. There were approximately four hundred newspapers that ran our story. The hits on the website increased dramatically. We cracked the top ten on the first page of Goggle for hits to websites concerning acid-free coffee. For the first time in our company’s history we were backordered and overjoyed. Luckily our roastary is in Phoenix so we were able to quickly up our production. The people at News USA notified me that the response time to our campaign was absurd.
Business is booming. This exposure has spawned many interesting opportunities. For example, the editor of Boys Life called me three different times before I was able to get back to her. She was very interested in my story for the magazine. When I questioned her over the distribution, she astonished me with an unbelievable number. Three million are printed per month. This gave me an opportunity to reach a lot of young people; the demographic is mostly ages eight to sixteen. If I inspire just one person to start their own business, I have achieved and exceptional goal. While I was busy being ecstatic about this staggering opportunity, ABC Night Line sent me an email stating that they were very impressed at what I have made with my company. They liked how I give an alternative to the coffee industry. Innovation is the root of the new age business world. They were most impressed by the fact that I am only seventeen and already in a huge grocery store chain in AZ. They where putting a story together about young, successful entrepreneurs and I fit perfectly into that mold.
When I was in eighth grade, I officially became an entrepreneur. My friends and I were all playing sports and going to movies, but little did they know, the second I got home I was working to sell the world’s largest commodity. Soon, they began to realize I was not your average teenager. I was working to create myself a coffee empire.
Being a student, an athlete, and a coffee entrepreneur has made a dramatic impact on my life. I immediately acquired self-discipline; a quality strongly pursued by high school students was a necessity for my business. I was always very outgoing, however now, I was learning to mold my knack for talking into a foundation for my business tactics. My public speaking skills have skyrocketed. As they say, practice makes perfect.
Business started out slow. Being a thirteen-year-old entrepreneur, it was not the immediate flow of cash I had hoped for. I learned I would have to actually work for my money. My dad had a friend in the coffee business and one day he presented me with silver packs of coffee that had been roasted in Bosnia. I agreed to sell them and set off door to door with my bike and a backpack full of coffee. The first couple sales were hard. I was a little shy until I realized these adults were in no way threatening. After I sold the first two cases, my dad’s friend realized I was serious and had ten more cases shipped. I continued going door to door and he agreed to provide the financial banking. With those cases of coffee began the company we all know today as Tyler’s Coffee. The support I received from my dad and his friend was the foundation of my company.
When you begin a business at age thirteen, you must learn customer relations very quickly. I would go door to door on my bike with a backpack full of coffee. When people answered the door, I would shyly introduce myself and tell them about my coffee. I learned that these adults are not threatening and that gave me confidence in business and to have customers coming back. One customer ask me a lot of questions and I did not have all the answers. That experience with him gave me time to think, I need to know every answer to a question about coffee. Customers have really helped me out in business. Even with all this help from my customers and my parents, my business grew slowly.
The next four years I grew and matured immensely. Unfortunately, my company did not do the same. It was at that point that I realized I needed to be successful to do so. I immediately set off breeding my business skills. I had prior experience talking to adults, but I trained myself to sound professional. I needed to make sure I was not underestimated due to my age. I researched and studied my project to make sure I could answer any question precisely and in detail. This revival of my passion for entrepreneurialism were vital to who I am today and the success of my business.
I attended my first Food Trade Show, which was a turning point for my young career. I was now sixteen years old, and faced with the challenge of marketing my product to the experienced buyers at the trade show. They demanded perfect professionalism, which I was still striving to accomplish. The first trade show was an experience; the second was sure to be a grand triumph. I realized samples were the way to the buyer’s heart. While they sampled, I was able to amaze them with facts about the product. All this work was still not paying off to my liking, however practice makes perfect.
The second I got home after the food trade shows, I knew I needed to get my name out there. My first thought was paying for advertising. Luckily, free promotion was thrust my way; a reporter from the Arizona Daily Star contacted me. He interviewed me and put my story in the paper. It was the exact type of exposure I needed. My online business flourished. My next step was to expand the scope of my story nation-wide and get my company’s name in the limelight. My father and I contacted one of his associates who was the CEO of a major media campaign company. We flew out to Virginia and negotiated a contract that would the story of Tyler’s Coffee into a magazine that would be distributed to 10,600 newspapers across the nation.
With the 2006 holiday season came the most wonderful gift of all, a spot on the shelf of an exclusive, high-end Arizona grocery store chain. One fine December day, I called the general manager of the local AJ’s Fine Foods. She told me to bring by some samples. I jumped on the opportunity and it worked. She loved it. Unfortunately, I received another real business world slap in the face when she informed me I would need liability insurance policy. The good news was it was the real deal. My company was becoming more and more legitimate and while known by the second.
The success at this store in Tucson has been phenomenal. So much so that we are now in every branch of AJ’s throughout Arizona and they continue to reorder. We sold more coffee in a month than any other new coffee company found in AJ’s. The store manger informed me that AJ’s is making a sizeable profit, which is exciting because it is so reasonable for such a revolutionary product. We at Tyler’s Coffee believe that we not only compare to other coffees, but also belittle them. We plan on demonstrating this at AJ’s and making our coffee a household name worldwide. We do however, plan to remember our roots therefore I feel that we are going to have a lasting relationship with AJ’s in the future.
For now we plan on continuing to advertise our product and gain worldwide prestige. News USA provides us exposure to the national media. In February, our first article went out in their magazine to 10,600 newspapers. The response was phenomenal. There were approximately four hundred newspapers that ran our story. The hits on the website increased dramatically. We cracked the top ten on the first page of Goggle for hits to websites concerning acid-free coffee. For the first time in our company’s history we were backordered and overjoyed. Luckily our roastary is in Phoenix so we were able to quickly up our production. The people at News USA notified me that the response time to our campaign was absurd.
Business is booming. This exposure has spawned many interesting opportunities. For example, the editor of Boys Life called me three different times before I was able to get back to her. She was very interested in my story for the magazine. When I questioned her over the distribution, she astonished me with an unbelievable number. Three million are printed per month. This gave me an opportunity to reach a lot of young people; the demographic is mostly ages eight to sixteen. If I inspire just one person to start their own business, I have achieved and exceptional goal. While I was busy being ecstatic about this staggering opportunity, ABC Night Line sent me an email stating that they were very impressed at what I have made with my company. They liked how I give an alternative to the coffee industry. Innovation is the root of the new age business world. They were most impressed by the fact that I am only seventeen and already in a huge grocery store chain in AZ. They where putting a story together about young, successful entrepreneurs and I fit perfectly into that mold.
