INTERVIEW | Make Money by Reinventing Coffee with Mesh Gelman

0:00You're listening to the Travis Makes Money Podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30-day trial of the best all-in-one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to GoHighLevel.com slash traps. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money Podcast where it's our mission to help you all make some more money. Today on the show I have a new friend, Mesh Gellman, Mesh is the founder and CEO of the Cumulus Coffee Company which has created the first ever solution for making specialty cold brew beverages at home in a matter of seconds. I launched Cumulus after years of R&D and brings decades of experience in coffee innovation and entrepreneurship to this latest venture. He spent six years at a little tiny coffee startup called Starbucks overseeing all store retail and brand partnerships and then leading Starbucks's innovation incubator. So he knows a thing or two about coffee, knows a thing or two about scaling businesses and I appreciate him for taking the time to come on the show today. Mesh, what's up man welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me excited to be on the show.

1:01So how how long have you been drinking coffee, Mesh? Well, it seems like to be at this point are you is like part of your blood just coffee running through your veins. What's going on? I don't have red or blue in mind. It's just straight. Yeah. It seems like it. Let's go back in time before we jump into Cumulus and all the things you're working on right now. Tell me the first time that you ever made a dollar that just got you excited. Like the first time you were like I cannot believe somebody just paid me money to do this thing. Oh, wow. Actually was in high school. I went to boarding school and there was a kid in our parade that would go home every night and they would arrange for transport for him. And he lived near this really cool donut shop and I arranged to have the driver pick up fresh donuts at night. And he would bring it back to school and I would hustle them. And that was like that was my first gig. Nice. You had to actually on board an employee and stuff like that. Oh my God. By the way, it's like now that I'm thinking about it. I don't know if he was legal.

2:08So I was like, there's an old cash deal. So it worked out. You know, if you're if you're an entrepreneur and you didn't do something that's borderline illegal to sell something in high school then are you really an entrepreneur? You know what I mean. Okay. So was that was that the clear path for you from that point or did you go more traditional out of out of high school? Oh, yeah. No, no, don't know man. I hung that up. The swinging donuts. I wasn't my thing. You was probably more than it was putting on more calories than I wanted to do. Yeah. 15 but you know. So actually I had a really like untraditional path as far as education and then kind of like what I pivoted to work. to work. So we stopped slinging donuts and I was doing, I was part of a Talmudic research center and I'm Jewish and was really spending time learning and about ancient texts and how to apply it into kind of like current modern times and things like that. And my first like real gig was

3:11like this teaching class that I did. I actually started as a teacher and it was a disaster. It's just like, you know, I'm not a teacher. I'm not a teacher. I learned that I'm a better listener than I am to offer. So then what was the step after that? How long did it take you to realize that and what did you do once you were done with that? Well, I realized that when we were like kind of like we were doing like extracurricular education and my class the second week didn't show up. They gave me a lesson that like I really wasn't good at it. So yeah, that might be that might that might be some feedback. You know what I mean? Yeah, we were getting like 75 dollars a week to go get this class and I really needed that money and I was determined no matter what to figure out how to like engage a class and this class was not with youngsters. It was

4:11with professionals and one of the gentlemen who was part of the class was actually a M&A attorney partner in a very swanky New York firm and I was like I called up the head of the program. I'm going to meet this guy in his office. If he's not coming to my class, I'm going ahead and I ended up kicking off like kind of like this one-on-one kind of like mentorship program where I as a young kid was mentoring older people once a week and kind of like just you know going deep into some Jewish topics and and studies and things like that and it was it was a very interesting learning for me about like that you know the smartest people I knew were asking questions and not just like you know giving out and talking more listening. Yeah, where did Starbucks come in? Starbucks came in because that little teaching education gig didn't last that long 75 dollars a week

5:11was not going to pay the bills so I ended up jumping into home-fascents textiles and my first company that I started was making like comforted sheets decorative pillows towels wouldn't go okay wait wait wait hang on hang on you sometimes sometimes on the show people just say stuff and then we just like let it go but going from what you were doing to then just being like so I decided to jump into textiles is like a wild thing to say to me why why that world what was there something did you have a connection did you know somebody was it intriguing to you why did you jump into that I've like completely not adjacent space. I guess when you say that way it kind of sounds like yeah I agree it doesn't sound regular it wasn't regular one of the guys that I studied had a raw material business where he did like arbitrage commodity trading on it and I was like super curious like where is all this like big container loads coming from Indonesia Pakistan India

6:17China like what who needs a lot of this fabric where's it going and I started this discovery and that ultimately I was like wait let's not just do fabric let's make finished product let's like go all the way and that wasn't something that the company was interesting to us like all right I'm gonna start my own company how did that first company go well well and we're really well we actually you know I would say the biggest lesson that I had from that was that when you are desperate for business and you like are looking at opportunities if you can make a little like moment where to make some sense grab it and for us in our company it was a TV shopping network HSN home shopping network in out of Tampa Florida and in order one of the key things for like television retail back in the day was this idea of scarcity that it's selling out and it's limited and so they would give you like six minutes of airtime to sell a product and if you could

7:18like make it like only a few pieces of it right like and would sell out to be a great story and no big company wanted to make a few of something it's inefficient it doesn't make sense we were a young company starting out we were like yes let's do it and that really catapulted us for not only being able to generate revenue really quickly but we did a lot of R&D of product development through all those like little little little tiny things we kept on learning and learning and improving and improving so it ended up really being a catapult for us where our next step was we went to at that time a major retailer Jayce Penny which was one of the biggest in the country and they were like who is this company and you have all this beautiful product we never even heard of you are like the truth is we didn't exist six months ago but like what happened and we adopted some learnings that we had from TV selling and we applied it to retail floor and we ended up within

8:20three years winning Jayce Penny supplier the year award two times in a row and wow yeah to this day had one of the most successful programs in their history so it was quite helpful how long was this stint in this company and what was your exit out of it did you exit the company did you maintain ownership did like tell me tell me more about that transition period you know for me the transition was not a difficult one in 2003 I was at a dinner and at that dinner I met Howard Schultz who is the founder and CEO or was the founder and CEO at that time of Starbucks actually he wasn't the CEO he was in his first retirement and he was at that dinner because the CEO Jayce Penny which was our client was being honored and he was on that my colon who was the CEO Jayce Penny

9:20was on the board of Starbucks and that's how I went over to him and I introduced myself to him and he had you know asked me what I was doing there and explained how our business has just like really just catapulted and started and we we started a great friendship a personal friendship what was Starbucks into that at that time was Starbucks already fairly ubiquitous or was it still sort of in the relatively unknown phase oh no it was like a it was on every street corner already you know it wasn't and it was in I think in like 60 countries that ready at that time okay at least 2000 stores globally at that time wow okay it was it was it was it was it was pretty ubiquitous and it was like at the like 2003-2004 publicly traded doing fantastic you know and really it's kind of cultural iconic times how long from that first meeting with him until you started working

10:22there eight years eight years yeah so you were still running your company for that duration yeah I was running the company and then like what we just became friends and like anytime I'd be out in Washington you know Costco Nordstrom a little internet company called Amazon you know like actually I know it's funny to think about it that way yeah we had we had we had just developed the nice relationship and for me I was getting to see Starbucks as a customer and through the lens of the man who created it so it's like so fascinating right that your vision of the founder yeah and through the lens of the customer and it was just so magical what was happening there how it ended up coming back to Starbucks in 2008 he had retired he came back in OA and started learning more and more about the company meanwhile for me you know we were doing private label all these things I was telling you about JC Penney HSN Target calls everything was done through other people's label and what was very interesting was that on one hand it was fantastic

11:27you know a company has a label a private label like Macy's you could be 800-900 doors overnight on the flip side they truck they could replace you like that and you don't have brand equity zero and it was like starting to weigh on me it was like you know what it's time for me to develop a relationship directly with the customer get closer and you know and like kind of like at that time Starbucks was doing its thing I was like getting a little bit and see about you know that you know that tension that created and I was like at the right moment just like time to time to not be active in my own business and go on to do something a little bit more so tell me tell me the conversation did you did you initiate this conversation did Howard Schultz initiate the conversation how did that end up playing out we were discussing kind of like the state of coffee I remember what was actually coffee at home we were talking about and you know and there was this ability and idea that Starbucks had this amazing platform

12:35with all the stores that they had and millions of people are we coming through it and we were like tossing over like what do you do with all that like like there's so much equity there there's so much visibility how do we create something that's like entrepreneurial sticky and exciting to do with it and we didn't really have the answer so we said so Howard was like you know what why you come to the company first for a few months and kind of like go on a listening tour and explore and let's see what we see what we learn what can happen from there and that's actually how it started I started out as a like calls like a consultant without a real project wow it was just to like listen and curiosity consultant yeah I like that I just wanted that yeah yeah but that in fact that seems like a pretty good career path if anybody's hiring curiosity consultants shoot me an email it sounds like a lot of fun you don't have any answers we just have questions exactly that's my kind of gig mesh that's my kind of gig okay so so tell me tell me

13:39practically what you took away from that experience working for one of the most globally recognized brands in the world from one of the you know best visionaries on the planet probably I could sum up everything I learned in Starbucks from a very raw moment when Howard had the senior leadership together and literally in a very small intimate setting with his eyes watering up he said the following to us he goes to remember the world will be fine tomorrow without Starbucks the world as and we have to let that sink in the world will go on perfectly fine without Starbucks so we need to go out there and earn our business every single day and the way we do that is by being true to who we are what we stand for and why people trust us rely on us and want to engage with us and like that

14:48lesson those words I was remember just looking at him right and his eyes were like watery and you saw it and he was like scared he was like I like you know like kind of like everybody talks about entrepreneurs are always scared like that like and it was like so impactful about that fragile balance between our and cars and that tension that needs to be created because if you give up on either one you fail and that to me is the kind of like the highest order of lesson that I walk away from that company and what an amazing lesson to just from a leader like that who's willing to drop the the perception of the God complex of like well everybody listen to me because I have built this wonderful business that everybody knows about and we've changed the way that people get coffee and we've introduced new coffee drinkers who thought they hated coffee their whole lives and now they love it and like he could have easily been one of those just egotistical type of people but it

15:52also speaks to the fact that now Starbucks is on every corner and the opposite corner you know like it's still it blows my mind dude like I'll go to I'll go to a Starbucks that's right here and then I'll like walk out walking down the street with my coffee and like a block down the street there's another one that's also full of people you know and that's probably speaks to that though that that he never he never you know lost his way and and and stuck his head in the sand and pretended like he had already made it he was always trying to innovate and learn new things and ultimately serve the customer which I assume has to have helped you now with going into your own venture so tell me a little bit about the the inception of cumulus where did the idea come from where you still at Starbucks is this something that you were kind of incubating there along with Howard like what why split off and and take this new risk on a brand new venture so cumulus well I think to take a step back in 2014 Starbucks introduced cold brew to the world

16:55at mass it was of course like a little bit more artisanal before that but its access for most was started when you know Starbucks started in 2014 2015 they introduced nitro cold brew and you know and what I found you know essentially what cold brew is different like I think there's a lot of confusion market between a ice coffee and cold brew cold brew it starts way before the moment you drink it meaning that you take the beans you grind them up you soak them in cold water for an extended period of time and the flavor comes out gently and softly that's why it's like easier on the stomach it's more balanced and it has like it's just a whole different flavor than just like a hot extracted coffee very different behind it and in 2014 when you know the company had launched it this process that I just described to you is really manual and very prone to ever like you put in the ratios different you let it rest for 16 hours 18 hours 20

18:02hours it tastes a little different each time you know there's so many different variables that can happen when you press a button on a espresso machine or you put in a basket of grinds into a bun to you know take out a hot coffee it's very precise it's very instant and you have it right away cold done right is really complex right nitro you have all these tanks and wires and tubes and the breaking that that that that it's like just crazy and what was interesting was that in a way the challenges of being able to do this properly was requiring a company as great a Starbucks to kind of retrofit everything to accommodate for cold and it wasn't necessarily insight that I had at that time but I just was operationally aware of all the challenges like why can't we scale nitro quicker well like well we got it we need three feet of capture space we need underneath space we have to get those big metal cans delivered and all that's you know

19:04the nitrogen gas and everything it's like and that was breaking and it's like new as you could imagine you know not an easy thing to do and like I would say at the same time what was happening to me what was happening to culture is that somewhere along this line I switched from being a hot drinker to a cold drinker I don't remember when it happened I don't know how it happened but all I know is that you know years later I only joined in cold when I started drinking hot so you know it was just something that I gravitated why wasn't just me when I joined Starbucks 35% of all drinks were coming out on ice today it's almost 80% you think about like that to ask the difference so yeah it's quite it's quite fascinating how the world has changed to drinking you know ice lattes and cold brews and things like that so how long in R&D before you launched version one of the product

20:06ooh three and a half years for you oh no what am I saying four and a half years four uh yeah R&D yeah was there any point along that R&D journey that you were like maybe this isn't gonna work like we've been working on this for quite some time now you know it wasn't this moment of maybe wasn't gonna work but it was more a journey of the R&D is that let me prove to myself that it can work it's actually of kind of like I was slipped on the head it was like what if it started off this what if for yeah actually we we we started it not like kind of like from an R&D perspective we started by like kind of like design first we wanted something really beautiful and then we were like okay now we came up with this idea of what we want so like we sketched it out and now we have to engineer something to actually do that that we could scale that could be food sake that could be commercial that you know won't cost a million dollars to make each machine you

21:08know so it was like it was like milestones can't we do that now how do we solve for that how do we solve for that so it was more a journey of like let's get to the next step versus like this well and then once we got to a certain point we're like okay this can work right so until that point everything was kind of like developed in-house and you know self-funded and it was at that point where I was like okay this can work now let's go out to the market and the company when I raised a bunch of money to be able to really get to some you know like can I you know from a from a concept to a product how have you found your time running this company now oh it brings me the it's the hardest job I ever had in my life it's more intense than anything I've ever done and it brings me more joy than anything I've ever done isn't that often how it is huh all the that is the yin and yin of life you know the things that are most worth pursuing are often the most difficult and most

22:10taxing but that's also what makes them worth pursuing right yeah I realized it was kind of cliche but it's really true it's so true it's like you know when it's your own company and you're building something your problems are the problems are your problems that's not the other person's problems yeah right right the winds are sheer they really aren't but the problems are yours mash I really really appreciate taking the time to come on the show and share a little bit of the journey with us working people go to get more from you and chemilists and everything that you're working on chemilist coffee.com is the greatest place to learn everything about us and you're somebody who loves coffee and you want to understand you know what it means not retrofitting coal but building it from the ground up you know I just go explore it and just discover and you know if anybody of you know all your great business listeners and anything like that have any great ideas for me please you know reach out it's very easy to find me online and I just I'm always

23:12curious I mean you said it to me I'm the curious consultant right yeah right this day cubilist coffee.com that's cubilist like the cloud coffee.com mesh thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the show I know your busy guy do not take your time for granted everybody else listening remember money only solves your money problems but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank so let's solve that one first here on the traps makes money podcast thanks for tuning in catch you guys next time peace