We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alex French. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alex below.

Alex, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Dodged persistence is really key. Others would maybe call it grit. Entrepreneurship is so hard and you can’t do it unless you are in love with what you are doing. Although it is quite difficult, you will grow personally and become your best self in the process. By going all in, you realize it’s not as scary as you think, and you learn so much. Plus, you might make a difference in the world.

We had to spend months getting smart about coffee before we jumped into production. When we finally launched Bizzy Coffee we travelled the country in a van with no A/C to promote our brand. It takes a lot of effort and commitment to build a successful brand.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Andrew and I (Alex) have been best friends since middle school. Soon after graduating, both of us began jobs in the corporate sector. It goes without saying that it was overwhelming – We had way too much on our plate and way too little energy for it. Andrew was so over-caffeinated that he started to get acid reflux. That’s when we started our quest for a healthy and convenient source of caffeine and found out that cold-brewed coffee is less acidic than other types of coffee. But finding cold-brewed coffee was like finding a needle in a haystack so we started making our own cold brew coffee in our cramped apartment in 2013 by using what we had on hand – a crummy grinder and some cheap coffee beans. Needless to say, our quest for the best cold-brewed coffee became a passion. Fast-forward to three years, we decided to go all in and turn our passion into a career. We started with our Bizzy Cold Brew Coffee Concentrates. Today, with our Cold brew coarse ground coffee and brew bags we are the makers of the best-selling cold brew coffee on Amazon. And our retail business, selling our delicious Ready-to-Drink cold brew coffee in various grocers all over the country, continues to grow as well! It’s been a wild ride, and so much has changed, but one thing has remained constant: our promise to make every cup of Bizzy Organic Cold Brew Coffee the best it can be, and to provide the best products and customer service on the planet.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Rewinding back to 2013, we weren’t exactly coffee connoisseurs. We only knew which coffee beans we preferred for our cold brew. So we basically spent a lot of time getting smart about coffee. We visited local coffee shops and took roasting classes at local roasteries. We experimented with every variable we could think of: brew times, grind sizes, coffee-to-water ratios, water type, bean roast profiles, and so on. We tried different things until we got to a point we were satisfied with product. We didn’t stop there, though! We still needed some outside validation. To gain more consumer insights, we conducted a few rounds of formal tasting tasting. When we felt confident enough, we took the next step and launched Bizzy into the US market.

I would say the biggest lesson I learnt was to go all in! I wish I did that with my first business. It’s extremely challenging, but during the process you will develop as an individual and become your best self. By going all in you realize it’s not as scary as you think and (you) learn so much. Plus you might make a difference in the world.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

It’s an old one, but “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi is one that sticks out. It’s an excellent book that will help you understand the power of networking and relationship building. Ferrazzi shares many ideas to help brand yourself and reach out to more and more people. In fact this book is about treating your life as a big networking event. It’s a fantastic book and we have listened to it at least 12 times. We’ve benefited greatly from really practicing what we learned from this book, as we’ve met so many supporters, mentors, investors through the process.

We also find a lot of good resources on the Shopify blog and podcast because we do a lot of our own digital marketing. The best part is that it’s entirely free. There is a lot of tips and tricks on how to optimize pages, ads and the like. There’s so much information out there you have to be able to sift through it and pick the ones that will make a dent in your business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bizzycoffee.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bizzycoffee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BizzyCoffee/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bizzy-coffee/mycompany/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bizzycoffee
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL8mAtibQE8ZZAIpDgRGqdg