087: Is the World's Strongest Coffee… a Death Wish? The Marketing Journey of Mike Brown.

Background on Mike Brown of Death Wish Coffee:

Mike Brown saw a need for coffee that was both strong and delicious to serve his groggy morning customers. After creating the perfect blend of beans and combining it with his unique roasting technique, the ‘World's Strongest Coffee' was born. Today, over a million people have trusted Death Wish Coffee to wake them up and keep them going every day. Death Wish Coffee is a digital-first coffee brand that distributes online worldwide through DeathWishCoffee.com and Amazon.com. As a result of winning Intuit Quickbooks ‘Small Business Big Game’ competition, Death Wish Coffee was also the smallest business to ever have a commercial played during the Super Bowl.

In 2015, Death Wish Coffee won Intuit’s ‘Small Business Big Game’ competition, which gave them a 30-second commercial spot during the Super Bowl. Since then, Death Wish Coffee has grown every day, allowing Mike to reach more coffee drinkers than ever before. Death Wish Coffee was the official coffee sponsor of New York Comic Con, they have sponsored NASCAR Drivers Ty Dillon and Daniel Hemric, and they had the opportunity to support amazing charities like the Special Olympics. Mike also continue to release limited edition merchandise such as apparel and mugs to make sure the Death Wish brand fits into every aspect of the community's lives. And now, Death Wish Coffee is on thousands of store shelves. But their efforts go beyond providing the world's strongest coffee. On June 29, 2018, Mike and his team sent an instant, freeze-dried blend of Death Wish to the International Space Station to fuel the crew of NASA Expedition 56.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[0:53] Michael Brown is the founder and CEO of Death Wish Coffee Company, which gained the reputation as the world’s strongest coffee.
[1:45] Death Wish Coffee entered a competition where they won a $4 million dollar worth of Super Bowl commercial.
[5:01] The Death Wish Coffee Superbowl commercial created a lot of buzz. Their website number kept going up and it was their best sales day.
[8:35] Mike explains why his coffee is different from the others. His coffee is a blend of Arabica and Robusta beans, which offer a huge caffeine kick to the drinkers.
[14:40] Mike quit his accounting job and did nothing but hang out on coffee shops for a year. He eventually got the idea of buying and running his own coffee shop.
[18:21] Mike made a number of mistakes during the first several years of his coffee shop. His overhead was too high resulting in more money going out than going in.
[20:34] In early 2011, everything was not doing well for Mike. His finances and his personal life were spiraling down.
[23:29] Mike used online marketing for the first time to promote and sell his Death Wish coffee.
[27:06] Mike asked one of his baristas to work for him on marketing his Death Wish coffee. It was a risk he took and it paid off because they succeeded in getting more customers and buyers.
[32:21] Bloggers started writing about Death Wish Coffee and it circulated around until Good Morning America called Mike to feature him on the program. This was the turning point of his business.
[35:20] After being featured in Good Morning America, Mike got a lot of orders for his Death Wish coffee that he had to ask some of his friends to help him fulfill all the orders.
[41:46] In 2013, Mike started getting into the Self Help and coaching programs like Unleash the Power Within and Tony Robbins. This was a major boost for Mike in terms of developing himself.
[45:13] Even after gaining success in marketing and selling the Death Wish coffee, Mike and his team still experience some setbacks every year.
[48:45] Today, Mike has established a great team and he’s not doing the heavy work anymore compared to when he was still starting the business.
[53:21] Mike practices a routine every day, which helps him work effectively and get things done.

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖📚 Favorite Book(s)? The Count of Monte Cristo
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Clip on cup holder. I use this everywhere in my house.
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Seller Labs' Feeback Genius – We set this up years ago. It requires the smallest amount of attention and drives the largest impact on our online reviews (Amazon). It's a great product that is backed by an amazing team and is a huge reason we've been the top performing coffee on Amazon for the past 4 years.
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Maybe a listener could help you solve this issue… 💭💡: Luckily, Death Wish Coffee is growing at the pace we are allowing it to grow at. The process has been enjoyable and strategic. But saying “No” to ideas I know could be winners is always a challenge and has been a distraction at times. I'm not a quick decision maker and spend way too much time analyzing. Luckily, my team steers me in the right direction but not until I've spent a great deal of time doing my homework. Also, video. Everyone needs to do more video.

Key Point from the Interview:

“Right when you’re at your last point of no return that you’re gonna call it quits and give up on everything, it’s right at that point where I think, you’re right about to succeed.”