Ep. 032 - Christian Castro, Co-Owner of Industry Finishes

02/13/17 • 38 min

THE SEA-TOWN PODCAST: Interviewing Seattle's Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs

This week’s guest is Christian Castro, Co-Owner of Industry Finishes, a new company spinoff to flush out the already great logistical, office furniture & cubical supplies, facility services and IT Services provided by Reliant Group. Highlights From This Episode: Christian Castro talks about the various businesses he has had and his journey as a serial entrepreneur. He ended up here in Seattle when he agreed to help one of his friends grow his fledgling IT business, which brought him from flipping houses and doing IT in Pheonix, AZ to Seattle. Castro talks about what shaped him to be willing to take more risks and put it all on the line to create something from scratch. His parents were from Mexico and migrated her in their late teens. His dad retired at age 64, after starting in agriculture at age 16. He started picking lettuce to buying his own tractor and eventually starting his own agriculture business. His mom financed Christian's first RadioShack computer and it's his parents investment in him and their determination to make it work and figuring out how to make it that has made Christian successful and persistent in squeezing the opportunities out of life's situations. Along the way, what has been your biggest challenges? There is no such thing as an "overnight success". Make a plan but understand that you are going to have to change courses many times along your journey. Castro thinks it's true what they say about Thomas Edison... he found 100 ways on how to NOT make a lightbulb, before he was the first person to make the lightbulb. You will have many failures to get to your success. For Christian, both construction and computers have been passions for him and his challenge is focusing on just a couple opportunities at a time... there are just so many opportunities out there for everyone, the real struggle is just focusing on one at a time. At the end of day, if he was retired and could just do whatever he wanted, he would probably just focus on building houses. What is your biggest challenge now? Christian wants to make sure they have the right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus (to use the "Good To Great" verbiage). Some people want perfection and want to retain 100% of their customers... Christian is actually of the reverse philosophy: You've got to let go of the worse 5% to make room for the better 10% so you can focus on quality growth. Though things are changing so rapidly with technology and business, it's still well worth the time and energy to develop out a 5 year plan. As Christian is getting older, he is really seeing the importance in investing his time in the things that are important to him and he wants to partner with the right people and not get stuck in a "bad business marriage". Scott (the owner of Reliant Group), says at the end of his regular meetings that, "I want you to go out today and fail somewhere", because that means the employees are making decisions and the only way one can learn is by making decisions. They empower the employees to be invested in the company by allowing them to be part of the decision making and not micro-managing.

What is your greatest strength? Being able to see an issue from many different perspectives but is able to assess it quickly to make a decision.
What habit do you wish you had ? Better and clearer timely execution of decisions.
What boundaries have you setup to keep from being distracted by technology or other time suckers? Prioritizing opportunities - committing to particular opportunities and putting the blinders on to ignore the other opportunities so they can stay focused and keep quality high.
What is the best advice you have ever received? Work hard now so you don't have to work hard later.
Do you listen to podcasts? What are your favorites? Casey Neistat
What is your one book recommendation for our listeners? "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Coleman or "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves
Parting Guidance - "We all think that we have time... but we don't" and this becomes truer and truer every day of our lives. They say everyday like its your last day because one day this will be true.

Epi...

What is your greatest strength? Being able to see an issue from many different perspectives but is able to assess it quickly to make a decision.
What habit do you wish you had ? Better and clearer timely execution of decisions.
What boundaries have you setup to keep from being distracted by technology or other time suckers? Prioritizing opportunities - committing to particular opportunities and putting the blinders on to ignore the other opportunities so they can stay focused and keep quality high.
What is the best advice you have ever received? Work hard now so you don't have to work hard later.
Do you listen to podcasts? What are your favorites? Casey Neistat
What is your one book recommendation for our listeners? "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Coleman or "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves
Parting Guidance - "We all think that we have time... but we don't" and this becomes truer and truer every day of our lives. They say everyday like its your last day because one day this will be true.

Epi...

Previous Episode

Ep 031 - Chris Smith, Owner of LowerCase Brewing

This week’s guest is Chris Smith, Owner of LowerCase Brewing. You can get their beer on tap at The Copper Coin & Coastline Burger in West Seattle... or better yet, grab a bear at their new (Nov. 2016) taproom in Georgetown. Highlights From This Episode:

LowerCase Brewing opened it's doors in January of 2014 in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle with a taproom in Georgetown. The only place you can get their beer on tap outside of their tap room is at The Copper Coin and Coastline Burger's (Coastline Interviewed on Episode 12 of the Sea-Town Podcast) in West Seattle.
Like many Seattle breweries, LowerCase Brewing started off as a home brewing operations and simply called to where they are today... from brewing 5 gallon of beer to 500 gallons at a time.
Chris relocated from Tampa, AZ to Seattle for work (developing training for Starbucks) and decided to "do as the Seattleites do", so he started rowing crew and learning how to home brew beer.
What do you love most about what you do? Chris loves the variability of owning his own business and all the various skills and challenges he has to learn and adapt to.
Traditionally, with the competitive nature of the WA brewing scene, tap rooms have largely been thought of as secondary, with wholesale being the primary focus... But this is starting to change as the marketplace for tap-rooms becomes more accessible to smaller breweries and a much larger potential for revenue (The margins on beer are fantastic).
What was your biggest challenges when first starting the business? Raising capital. The original idea was to have a growler to go space but it eventually grew into a full-blown tap-room simply out of necessity based on the real estate spaces available. The tap room opened in November of 2017.
What is your biggest challenge now? The amount of check-boxes required to create and operate a new business in today's business climate is really challenging. It's about being scrappy and understanding what you need and what you don't need to make it and effectively run a business... take it one step at a time and don't try to boil the ocean.
What set's you apart from others in your industry? LowerCase Brewing tries to be about simplicity and just about brewing good simple beer. They don't make a ton of different beers... they brew 9 different styles of beer to try and appeal to every type of beer drinker.
Beer 101 - Most people would be familiar with lagers, because most large domestic beers are lagers (which take longer time to make or more time to "turn a tank"), but a beer like an Ale, takes less time to make and has more flavor complexity. Pale Ales (especially IPAs) are hoppyier, dark beers (like porters or stouts) tend to be sweeter.
The first 90 minutes of each day look like... coffee! Chis isn't "dependent", so to speak, but he really gets excited about having his coffee the next morning. About 50% of his day is planned, while the rest is being agile and getting done what needs to get done.
What is your greatest strength? Tenacity and (overly) optimistic.

Chris talks about another successful local business owner he knows: James Barrington, owner of the original Seattle food truck, Hallava Falafel and partner in Woodshop Bar-B-Q and Bread and Circuses, is mentioned as being cut from the same cloth as Chris and having been quoted as saying, "I may not be the smartest business owner or the most talented... but I'll outwork them all. I'll hustle". But Chris points out that success is not just a one dimensional thing or about how hard you can work. You also need to be able to tell a story, ability to organize, ability to access capital, ability to engage other people... it's so multi-fascinated. There are tons of failed businesses that had really hard working owners.

What habit do you wish you had ? He wishes he was a better communicator. He has a tendency to take tasks and projects from inspection through execution... and then realizes he never really told anyone about it, which can not be so great when you have business partners and investors to keep in the loop.
What are you passionate about? People and making sure they understand the potential that each one of us posses ...

Next Episode

Ep. 033 - Erin Williamson, Owner of Pier Coffee

This week’s guest is Erin Williamson, the owner of Pier Coffee, a Seattle based cold-brew coffee brewer and distributor. They brew, package and produce their coffee cold and can it for ready to drink applications at grocery stores. The big idea is that when your on the go and grabbing a quick lunch at the grocery store, you shouldn't have to sacrifice having access to gourmet cold-brew coffee... even if it's out of a cold-case. Highlights From This Episode: Erin owned a coffee shop for a long time and after leaving that, she started a nano-brewery out of her laundry room in her house. Pier Coffee is now in a nice large brewing space that they share with Odin Brewing in South Center. The process for brewing cold-brew coffee and gourmet beer are pretty similar, so they take turns using the brewing equipment. They also have a tap-room off of the brewing space where they feature both Odin beers, Pier Coffee's cold brew, along with some food. Erin's transition from from the hands on brewing to more the business operations side of things has been very eye-opening for her. She's having to continually give up that she knows whats best all the time... realizing that she needs to give up control of certain aspects of the business to other people who are better at that aspect of the business then she is, and that she is also there to learn from them and that they are ultimately more successful in the end.

What do you love most about what you do? Love waking up in the morning, planning out her day and day never ends where she thinks its going to. There is always this joy of unexpected discovery everyday.
What was most surprising or unexpected with opening your own business? The steps required to grow in something and then the amount of hustle and need to project a certain image of "success" before feeling like your business was actually at that point.
What is Pier Coffee known for? That Pier Coffee really focuses on the technical aspect of cold-brew and the quality, coffee-sources, roasting & emphases on the brewing process. They also source all their coffee from woman owned coffee farms and cooperatives. Erin loves that they can bring together the technical and community aspect of making good coffee and running the business.
Where do you see the future of Pier Coffee being? Developing a really strong regional Pacific Northwest Regional presence. With the emphases being on quality and playing up the relationship between really good coffee and beer - tap houses and brewers were traditionally communal meeting areas. A place to exchange ideas and fellowship. In modern times, coffee houses have taken on that role too. Pier Coffee / Odin Brewery's tap-house is a place were you can can get both... and a meal.
What is your greatest strength? Curiosity. Erin reads about everything and is a big believe that we can fuel our own growth through knowledge. Erin is what she calls, an autodidact, meaning being self taught.
What habit do you wish you had ? To get up when her alarm first goest off.
What are you passionate about? Too much... Before she was in the coffee world, Erin was a non-profit arts administrator. She tends to get passionate about non-profit volunteer opportunities. She is involved with Ventures Non-Profit (checkout Ep. 28 with Beto Yarce, the Executive Director of Ventures) teaching a weekly class for startup low-income and minority entrepreneurs. She is on the board of the non-profit co-op The Bridge School and just founded a new non-profit, Engender International, with the mission of supporting woman around the world who are in commodity markets, specifically in textile and agriculture.
What has been your biggest challenge with running Pier Coffee? Discipline. About a year ago they had a product recall which was very difficult to work through and they had to stop and reflect on what they were really trying to do. The lesson learned was that in moments like that, don't get bogged down by focusing everything that needs to happen... just focus on the next step to move you in the right direction. And instead of thinking about the problem as this life shattering devastating moment, think about it as a puzzle and then try to fit the puzzle pieces in to put your picture back together.
In the past, what was holding you back from becoming the entrepreneur you are today? Erin didn't know that she was one. Ch...