I was having so many troubles with manufacturing because the coffee was really stable and condensed milk was really stable but if you put them together it was like this huge mass and I really wanted a clean product. And so when I was traveling to Vietnam, I saw this format on the desk of our supplier and they were using it for a Japan client because it's a really popular format in Japan. And so I was like that would solve so many of my problems I could create a separate creamer packet. This would be such a wonderful expression of Vietnamese coffee that doesn't exist today. It was a backup idea that I was like I'll just use that for e-commerce but the core line will still be the ready to drink but the ready to drink test run completely failed the week before fancy food. So I was like I guess this is gonna be what we have at the booth instead. This is Startup Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. In case you weren't aware, National Coffee Day is coming up on October 1st and what better way to celebrate than with a conversation about the roasted beverage that jump-starts America every morning. Today's guest is Debbie Way-Mullen, founder of Copper Cow Coffee. The first phase of Debbie's path took her all over the world, working for the World Bank. But even though she enjoyed the work, she knew she was destined to set out on her own. Her first venture wasn't the runaway success story she had hoped it would be, so she pivoted. And then she had to pivot again when her next idea missed a mark as well. The product we know as Copper Cow Coffee was only ever intended to be a backup plan. But the success it's had only serves to reinforce the phrase, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Debbie's story is a masterclass in how flexibility and paying attention to market signals can lead to huge returns. So listen in as we cover everything from why her family's experience in the food industry made her avoided at all costs, why her deal with Robert Herchevek fell through, and how she hired someone from Craigslist to design a logo, and accidentally came away with a name for her company. Now, back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Debbie, the founder of Copper Cow Coffee. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. Please tell everyone a little bit about what Copper Cow Coffee is. Well, Copper Cow Coffee is the first premium Vietnamese coffee company in the US. So we source from sustainable farms and create our signature pourover kits. So it has everything you need with these individual single-serve pourovers that are prefilled with coffee, and then you can make a pourover anywhere with no equipment. And then we also make our single-serve sweet and condensed milk creamers, which are very tasty and a wonderful addition to the experience. What made you wanna first start the company where you just obsessed with coffee? Were you in Vietnam? What was the thing where you were like, this has to become something that we can market here in the United States? It's interesting because like to get to this company, it was probably a bit of a progression of things. I'd say that my whole life being Vietnamese American, I've just, I always thought that there was some really exciting opportunity in a business sense to be able to kind of mainstream the flavors that I grew up with as soon as I began to realize that people were unfamiliar with them. But it's also, I grew up kind of conflicted because my mom came here as a refugee and a lot of her brothers and sisters did go into the food business. My uncle had a hot dog stand, and their uncle had a restaurant and just saw how hard it was. And I think that there was always this like sentiment of like getting into food is just the hardest life. And so I never really thought of it as a real option when I was younger. And instead, also just having this motivation of, one thing I've always known about my career since I was 16 when the first time I went to Vietnam was that I wanted to do something around creating opportunities there in that country that were more equitable. And so just seeing that my mom always talked about how hard it was growing up there and how much she didn't have opportunities. And not until I went, did I really see kind of like the extent of it. So I thought that, you know, becoming an economist and working for places like the World Bank would be the way that I could do that. And so- Is that what you did? You worked for the World Bank? Yeah, so I went to Berkeley and MIT and studied all the right things and got- My cousin worked for the World Bank. She was stationed in Congo. Oh, really? Yeah. They get paid tax for it, believe it or not. You do. I do not- It really helped fund the start of Copper Cow Coffee, actually. Yeah, it's a big perk. Savings, yeah. How old were you the first time you went to Vietnam? I was 16. Okay. And it's been crazy to see the progression of the country, actually. And so I think that there's also this like opportunity with coffee that kind of came about because of that. So, you know, Vietnam's actually the second largest coffee producer in the world. Behind who? Behind Columbia. Okay. And so it was just really interesting to learn that because I always knew that Vietnam had this like very robust coffee culture. Vietnamese coffee was something that I'd always ordered at a restaurant and I would say things like as I came of age in the Bay Area with like blue bottle and fills and all these things, you know, coming about, I was like, I wish that there was a version of this of Vietnamese coffee, you know. Did you grow up there in the Bay Area? I did. Okay, right on. That's amazing. So I've been to Vietnam. And I used to live in San Francisco. Oh, nice. The story's just getting better. Yeah. No, when I was in Vietnam, it was probably three years ago and yeah, it was amazing. I mean, there was a real coffee culture. Obviously we were like right in the heart of it all downtown but it was like, there was a lot going on. There was amazing cocktail bars. I was like super surprised and the food was amazing. Like I'd go to these restaurants and I wouldn't know how to read anything on the menu but we just ordered stuff and it was like the best food ever. I mean, super healthy also. And just like the flavors, super fresh. Yeah, it was amazing. And that's what's been really interesting to see in the last 10 years is Vietnam emerges a middle-income country. When I remember when I started to really think about this business idea, I went to Vietnam and told my mom that there were cars and she literally didn't believe me. She's like, it was just bicycles when I went when I was 16. And mopeds and stuff. Yeah, it was just like you'd see a taxi once in a while. I mean, mopeds were even like pretty infrequent. And I was telling her, I was like, there are stoplights. She was like, no, I don't believe you. She literally was like, you're making things up. And so it's been really incredible to even go back with my mom and have her see how it's changed so much. And so with that rise of a middle-income country is a rise of a middle class of disposable income. And when you have a coffee culture, now Vietnamese people are like, well, where does my coffee come from? What does this taste like? How is it brewed? And I think that there's just this great emergence of a supply of premium beans that was just kind of beginning to come to fruition domestically. And so the time really worked out well for me to be like, okay, well, this would be a great time to introduce that and connect that to the world's largest specialty coffee market, which is the US. And did you have to find a farm or did you, like what was like the first step in, I guess, approaching someone to probably partnering with a farmer, I would imagine, but I don't know. Yeah, no, I mean, so what I basically did was I just reached out to anybody that I knew from my previous work. Does anybody know anybody who works in coffee? And I talked to people who had a restaurant that had a nice coffee menu. I talked to literally and asked them, where do you get your coffee? How does that work? Cause I hadn't really worked in the food and beverage space before, this was all totally new to me. And so it was just like a rabbit hole of hundreds of conversations honestly that ended up, I probably just sampled about like 40 different farms before I was able to finally work with actually the co-op that we still work with today that have grown cause they kind of were doing this, wanting to do the same thing with their supply that we wanted to do, but domestically in Vietnam. So we're kind of their US partner, which has been incredible. So what was the one thing that stood out from them? Like just the shared vision for what, like you said, they wanted to do the same thing in Vietnam, what you wanted to do in the States. Was that like what set that farm apart from the other 40 that you visited? It was this like insane commitment to actually talking about how the coffee was made. I felt like there was everybody else.  It felt a little bit, it just didn't, it didn't seem like none of the coffee would be as premium as I wanted it to be, which means it has to score an 80 or above. And basically- On what score? There's like this coffee kind of grade scale from zero to 100. Okay. And so to be 80 or above means there's a, there's a requisite amount of like smoothness and flavor notes that you're gonna get. And there's like a group of people that like panelists or somebody. It is so insane. Like I still struggle to really be able to totally grade it blindly, but if you get people who are professional like roasters and tasters, they can be blindfolded in separate rooms and they will all be within a few points of each other. It is actually incredible. That makes sense. I mean, it's like that with wine. Yeah, it's, it's so similar to wine.  This is garbage. And it's just like, that's how, that's how quickly your taste buds can, can change and you can pick up on things pretty. So like, yeah, I get it. That makes sense. The more you know about coffee, the less, you know, that's like definitely the way it's felt for them. Yeah, it's philosophical. The guys in the front do that. They do blind. So farm cup in the front. They'll do the blind tastings every, I want to say every month. They're part of like some monthly group. Nice.  It has no name on it. And then they taste it. They guess where it's from. They describe it. And then they get their answers. Like the following week. Yeah, you'd be surprised at how people can be very, very spot on with it, you know. That makes sense. So you mentioned that, you know, you partially funded Copper Cow through working at the World Bank and not having any taxable income. It's a perk. It is a very big perk of the World Bank. What I wanted to ask is, was it, you know, as simple as you were working at World Bank one day, quit your job, went full-time into Copper Cow, or was there some overlap there in between where, you know, you were still having your day job and then kind of building up Copper Cow on the side? Very good question. Definitely in parallel for a while. So not a lot of work-life balance, I guess you could say for a while. Because I actually started off first with a cooking line because I was really obsessed with like mainstreaming Vietnamese flavors. And it was something that was a good experience for me to kind of do part-time on the side. I was renting commercial kitchen space, you know, in the evenings and weekends, literally selling it door-to-door to like different retailers. I think within about a year, I got into a lot of retailers. Like, and this was about eight years ago. And so I'm still full-time at the World Bank. I learned about like, how are you allowed to make something and actually legally sell it? Like, what do stores expect it to pay? How are they gonna mark it up? How do you get the product to stores? Like all these things were, it was a great learning experience for me to have while I was still full-time at the World Bank. And I think that I did have this idea of like, okay, every month I'm gonna sell more until one day it's in every home of America. Like I think I was very naive about the amount of capital that it would require. And so I think that's what it started off as I kind of had these savings from my previous career that was theoretically supposed to go to maybe like a down payment for a house. And so you're like, okay, let me put like $10,000 into this and just see what happens, you know? And then you're like, okay, let me put another $15,000 in until you're like, okay, now I'm beginning to see that curve of going into profitability where your profits exceed your overhead is just a lot longer than I thought it was. And that's when I started to look into both raising capital and also thinking about actually quitting my job. And that's actually when I decided to move into the coffee space. That's when I kind of realized that the cooking line showed a lot of promise in terms of people enjoying the brand and the premise and that I understood like the unit economics I needed for it to work, but I needed a bigger market. And that was when I kind of began to explore the Vietnamese coffee industry and just got, I just got so excited. And I was always really into coffee and my father drank pour over literally every day of my whole life growing up. So when it started to get big, it was a very exciting thing to think about, you know, making it easier for people. What was the food line? What was it? Was it like pre-packaged food? Like what was the concept? Oh my God, it was so esoteric. It was like meant for like me, essentially. That's another lesson about starting a company is like, don't make the product for yourself. Make it for a bigger market. It was, so in my family, we bottle things all the time and just to make things a little bit easier and give them to each other. And so there's this type of oil that we used to, that we cook with from the French influence, you deep fry shallots in oil. And then the oil afterwards just makes everything taste amazing. So it was infused oils and vinegars so that you could replace your oils and vinegars at home and everything would taste kind of like that fresh Vietnamese taste. What were you working at the World Bank? So I worked on loans to governments that would be focused on supply chain projects, mostly on transit development so that we're all focused on alleviating poverty. So mostly connecting rural areas or economic zones so that people would have more opportunities. Where were you stationed? I was in DC and at one point I was in Bangkok and then I was also, but I spent a lot of time in Delhi as well. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I like that. A different life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, my cousin, she was in Canada for a little while and then Congo, Germany for a bit. Seems like a great organization to work for if you want to see the world. Or be stationed. It's also like really amazing work, you know? They do a lot of very like honorable work, I would imagine. Yeah. That's how I describe it.  It's really hard. It's really hard. You connect to the real problems of the world. Yeah. And then it's hard to have accountability and there's a lot of things that are hard about it. And for me, it just, it was a really hard match culturally. Like these big bureaucratic places, I think that I know people who I got to, had the privilege of working with who are brilliant and they can thrive and really move folders. But for me, I was like, I want to move faster. I felt like it was incredibly agist honestly. It was a really hard thing. Was being like in my 20s and working there, you know, people were like telling me to take notes and I'm like, I have the same level as all these other people, but just because of the way I looked, people would just have a lot of it. They're pretty, it's just an old organization, you know? It was pretty hard for me. That's what drives you a lot of entrepreneurship in general. Yeah. That type of, they're like, oh wow, I can't grow at the pace I want, so I need to leave this thing. Which makes sense, we're all, we'll all survive and thrive in our own climates and so we just have to find them.  So at this point, you pivoted from food to coffee and at that moment you had already left or you were leaving your position at the World Bank? So as soon as I fundraised friends and family money. How much did you raise? I raised 400,000. Okay, friends, family, just coffee. And some in a couple of angels, yeah. Basically I like hit up anybody that I knew. Like I was getting like $10,000 checks from coworkers that I was like, hey, I'm gonna do this. They were like, sure. It was really awesome, the kind of support and I think it was such a great entrepreneur experience of just like, you just gotta ask and you're gonna be surprised by who says yes and who says no, you know? I think it was a really good experience. Okay, so then you raised and then what'd you do?  We launched a few months later at the fancy food show. So it was interesting though, because when I fundraised I was actually trying to make a ready to drink version of the product. What year was this? This was 2016. Okay, so at that time, I mean, that's not a bad idea. I mean, at the time it's like the hottest area, right? But one thing that was so great about having that oil and vinegar line was I knew how hard it was to ship a heavy liquid product. And it was, even though it was a small market, at least I had a good margin because like people are willing to pay quite a bit for a bottle of oil or vinegar. But I was like, so if I want it to be a $3. Yeah, there's your shipping. I was like, how do you actually, don't you just lose money every time you sell it until you sell at like 20 million in revenue maybe? And I was a first time entrepreneur. I think the idea of raising that kind of money was pretty daunting. And I was having so many troubles with manufacturing because the coffee was really stable and condensed milk was really stable. But if you put them together, it was like this huge mass and I really wanted a clean product. And so when I was traveling to Vietnam and concurrently trying to source, like finding this source of coffee, having these hundreds of conversations with people to find the right beans, I saw this format on the desk of our supplier and they were using it for a Japan client because it's a really popular format in Japan. And so I was like, that would solve so many of my problems. I could create a separate creamer packet. This would be such a wonderful expression of Vietnamese coffee that doesn't exist today. It was a backup idea that I was like, I'll just use that for e-commerce but the core line will still be the ready to drink but the ready to drink test run completely failed the week before fancy food. So I was like, I guess this is gonna be what we have at the booth instead. I love the story. Yeah, I love, I mean, that's the reality of how it goes. Yeah, it is. I remember Starbucks was launching there, so instant coffee in general has a really bad, like people think it's cheap.  And so when Starbucks was rebranding, they were trying to figure out a way, what's the right marketing message to make their instant coffee? And so they realized that they had so much cache with the Starbucks name that they would just put Starbucks in front of it. And so it became like Starbucks to go and it was just the packets. Yeah. And that's how they solved the marketing problem. They told it for like three bucks, I think. But it's something everyone struggles with. The instant coffee is for some reason just not, people don't like it. Yeah. And they don't wanna spend that much money on it when they buy it. Well, conjures up images of like fast food. You know, if you are given a McDonald's burger versus something that you would get at a fine restaurant, it's easy to see where that comparison can get messed up in people's minds. Yeah. So then how'd the show go? The show is great. We got chosen as the innovation of the show. Wow. So we were one of the top five. So they choose five innovations of like the 1500 products there. And why was it? It was because it was like a package they'd never seen before. It was a pour over that you do at home. Yeah, they were just like, this is so different and innovative and the quality is so great.  I feel like we should do it now. Yeah. Yeah. It's now a good time. Yeah, let's do it. And while we're doing this, I'm gonna make you multitask. Can you just explain, so I'm unfamiliar with fancy foods. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. In general or? In general. Like any fancy food? Oh no, there is a, one of the biggest trade shows that they have in the food and beverage world for people who are trying to get into grocery stores is called the fancy food show. So it's where you go and have like premiums. It's a rotating trade show, going to multi different cities. They have one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast every year. And so it's a place where you get to meet, you know, thousands of buyers. So it's where we got into our first, you know, thousand doors. God, that's such a great little shortcut. Like rather than, you know, going to a thousand different stores individually. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's so interesting now because when I talk to people who are starting companies, I tell them a lot about that's how we started. But I think I wonder how, what they're going to be like from now on because buyers in the interim have had to find other ways to do it. So are they going to still go and rely on them? Cause even with just the prevalence of like the internet beginning to be incorporated into your food and beverage buying, like I've seen like less and less business like coming to the shows, you know, relative to like 2016, 2017, right? As you're pouring this, do you give people directions on the pour also? Oh, I should. So with a pour over, you kind of want to wet the ground. So you saw I put just a little bit in there so that it got a little bit wet so that it does a nice bloom. You'll notice that like everything kind of puffs up and that's how you're going to get, if you just wait 20 seconds before starting to fill it up, you're going to get a much fuller expression. But if you don't do that, which like a lot of our customers know it still tastes good, but since I'm making it for you, I'm going to make it right. This is so cool. If you want to drink it like Vietnamese style, I would have just, I would do like one, two pours.   Yeah. And that's it. That goes in the trash. Looks like it's all paper, totally sustainable. Well, so we're working on a fully compostable version of it right now. So right now it does have to go in the trash, from a business perspective, why are you doing that? Is that important to you? Or is that something that you just? It's incredibly important to us. You know, that's something that, that is like top of mind that the whole team is. It's incredibly important to you. And where's the hangup on creating a 100% disposable or compostable package? Like what part of it are you having trouble with? So the problem really comes with like the seams of, you can tell that some things are like kind of, almost like in a way like glued together or adhered. And having that be compostable is pretty challenging. And what's hard is that for the past like three years, our supplier has been saying like, since we started the company being like, oh, we're months away from having a compostable version of this. And so we've always assumed, like kind of took it for granted. It actually coming to market. So we're looking into other avenues that we can self fund that innovation as well because we, they did finally come. COVID was a huge hangup for delaying it, but they came, gave us the prototype and it just, it kept falling apart on our big American mugs. And, you know, obviously that's not something that we can have. So now we're just trying to come out with our own version of that. And so that's something that we're pretty focused on right now. I would imagine it could be like some origami. Like there's like a, you know what I mean? Exactly. That's the thing is that we're finally just like, we just got to think of like bringing some industrial designers and this, you know, figure out how to do this. Cause I think what's interesting is- You could definitely do that. So I was at MIT one time there was a talk on origami and its implications around like crystals and how basically it solves like very high level math problems at some point. And they were basically saying like, oh look, you can use origami or at least the philosophy of it for woodworking, for housing. And it's all like nothing, there's no glue. Yeah. You know, it's just like complex crystal structures essentially. Yeah. That's the thing is you look at a tea bag that are compostable and you're like, so why can't this be, you know? And so I think that we know that there's something, I mean it was what the reason why we signed up, I signed up with this was cause they said that it was in the product roadmap, but sometimes it's you- It's hard. I know Brooke's dealing with this too, because yeah, the milk comes frozen and so it's like, how do you make that compostable the whole thing? Yeah, exactly. And so it's super challenging and ultimately expensive for the first iterations. Exactly, exactly. So who's gonna do the investment for the category? Cause you know, I think what's interesting is even the decision about, do you patent it? You know? Cause if- I think you should. But you also wanna make it affordable so that like other people aren't just creating more trash and contributing to the space.  When you first came out, how much was it? Is it the same price now? Was it, has your price changed? It's actually always been the same price.  So how much is it for a pack of how many? Six? So this one is a five pack. This is what you'll find in Whole Foods. So you've got a five pack of coffee that comes also with five creamers. Oh, nice. And so that is $10. That's super cheap. That's good to hear.  Are you considering it? Well, so it's been $15 to start and then it's just that grocery stores take a smaller margin, you know? And we're going national with Whole Foods next month and so we're able to like get a good deal with a better markup. That's amazing. Yeah. Congratulations. We're very excited. Yeah. Where did your first round of capital take you? Like how far did it take you? Oh man, a day? No, I'm just kidding. That's how it feels. I think this is the thing. I mean, it goes quick. People don't realize that. And you're also subject to the market on a lot of things. Packaging, iterations of that, marketing, iterations of that. It goes very quickly. Yeah. And I think that the thing that is exciting and hard is that like with these companies, cause it's just impossible for you to be profitable in the first year. So then if things go better than you planned, it just means that you're running out of money faster.  It's actually only lasting me nine months. You know, and so I did go back to the well and just raised from the exact same angels cause everything happened so fast within the first year. And so we ended up, so it ended up being about 900,000 from all of them in that first year. And did you set a valuation? So this is the question we get a lot from entrepreneurs that are just starting all the time. And the question is like, how do I value my company? And I tell them like, look, it's an art and a science.  Like if you're tech, then you have to go for probably a higher valuation than like, let's say a clothing company, right? But when I say that people don't believe me, like, oh, I think it's worth 10 million. And I'm like, you don't have any revenue. How can it be possibly worth 10 million? You have nothing. And people think I'm being like a bad guy. And I'm like, no, like this is a real thing. Like what, and so it's always like a, what did you, what did you end up? Like, was it like a sales projection? And you were like, I'm gonna make it that. Yeah, so I had a sales projection and then I like tripped and then I tripled it. I remember that was like, that was like the thing that I did. It's literally the best thing to do. Oh, but at the same time, like, actually it was like probably too low because we ended up making way more, we ended up making way more than, cause I think I was like, there's also like an art to projections, you know? Cause you want to show how ambitious you are, but you also want to deliver. And I think that that's something that's really impossible to do in the first few years of a company. Cause like, if you said you were going to make two million from nothing, but you made 1.5, is that like a failure? You know, like you like aim to do that. I think that there is an art to that too, that was really hard. And for me, you know, I came from not the startup world and not any, so I was just like the most realistic, like lowest possible knew that I would make revenue. And now I'm like, no you should actually do something a little bit more ambitious. So probably could have did a disservice to myself, but you know. But your investors are happy, I'm sure. And they're friends and family. So it's like just super fun, honestly.  It's the same thing I tell people though, it's the first year revenue times three. That's it. I'm like, that's your number. Yeah. And they're like, what if I don't hit it? I'm like, well, what if you exceeded? Exactly what it, yeah. I mean, luckily we exceeded it. You'll never know until you're there. So yeah, just set a number and raise some money. Yeah. We'll be back to the episode right after this message. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Chibani. Chibani's mission is making better food for more people and they brought that mission to non-dairy by crafting the ultimate oat milk for food service. Chibani Oat Barista Edition. It's plant-based, gluten-free, non-GMO and vegan friendly. Their formula was crafted for superior performance and versatility. Whether adding to black coffee or creating the perfect microphone, Chibani Oat Barista Edition will satisfy your cafe needs and delight your customers. Now, back to the episode. And then you were on Shark Tank at some point. We were just really recently, actually, a few months ago.  Was it still at the 900,000 or had it been? No, no, we had raised a seed round of funding with VCs. So we had raised an additional 2 million at that point. Because when you went on Shark Tank, I believe you asked 600,000 for 4% originally, is that correct? Okay. And then you ended up getting a deal with Robert at the end of it and he cut that evaluation in half and went to 600 for 8%. In my research in what happens, because we know from having other people on this show from Shark Tank, deals can often completely fall apart after the show. Things can happen where both parties are just gonna have to walk away amicably. Can you talk about that, where you're at right now? Because I couldn't find whether the deal had actually closed after the show or not. Right, the deal did not close. Because the thing is is that you tape and then they want to do their diligence for so long. Because it's like they want to know whether you're gonna air. It just ended up not the timing didn't work out because we were ready shortly after that because we just kept growing well before the airing. I would imagine what the Whole Foods deal, which you probably knew of when you went on. No, because the Whole Foods deal, I taped this in August 2020. Okay, okay. Because it was almost a year before it aired. So much happened. So this August 2020 that we, or it was like end of July was so early. And then the next few months we just grew so much that I was like I need to go raise around and they were not willing to budge and we hadn't moved at all on the negotiations and I was like, I'm not going to like anchor myself to this valuation when like we were so much larger than that. It's a good story. I mean, this is a reality. Here you are having to raise capital and you have a deal on some different terms than you're about to raise. And they're typical models. They want to kind of really make sure that you're gonna air. I think is something that's a huge part of whether they're gonna go through with it. And you don't know until a few weeks before whether your episode airs. So I remember we had just taken it out of the forecast because we had kind of had like a little shark tank bump and we were like, because I think it was, there was only a few weeks left of the season. So I was like, it's time for us to, they're like, you're gonna be on the season finale. So we were like, okay, so we actually will air after all. So it's been, that was a wonderful like nice to have for sure. So you did have time then to prepare for the inevitable shark tank bump, right? Yeah. After the airing. And what did you see in that? Was it sizable? Was it more than you expected? Less than you expected? It was a little more than we expected. I think also what was interesting for us is that we sell predominantly on our own website, but I think that what was really interesting to see was that we saw like a really big bump on Amazon because Amazon's like typically like 10% of our e-commerce revenue. And I think it was just, it just shows you that it's like that kind of purchaser who's like literally buying as the segment is running, you know, it's like that kind of person.  Did you have, did you who had given Amazon a tremendous amount of product? Or did you always? As much as they would let us, you know, I think what's really hard is it's always been a challenging, I'm sure like a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to really challenging route for us operationally because especially post COVID, there's so many maximums on inventory.  We're like, well, that's because you didn't give us. You maxed us out, yeah. So it's a really hard chicken and egg to get that going when like it's not the core business cause like we have so many great loyal customers who come to our website that we're, we just tend to be more focused on, but I think that like that shark tank kind of effect where it's like something where someone's like very impulsively like just like I want to try the thing that I'm, that's in front of me right now. It's an important opportunity that we're, we're always, every year I feel like we say the same thing, we reevaluate Amazon. We're like, well, I don't know, it's a lot bigger than it was last year. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. It's a pain to manage though.  It's really, it's been, it's a love hate. Well, it's good. I'm glad to hear about the bump worked out well. Yeah, yeah. Did you ever meet Robert in person? He's here in LA. Did you guys ever connect? No, oh my God. All these people also have like armies of people who deal with these deals. So no, I didn't, but I mean, I obviously got to meet him when we taped and I think I was like really surprised by how much it was such a real pitch. Even though of course it's like a lot of people kind of yelling at you because they're all celebrities who want sound bites. It's not like a more civilized pitch if you're normally pitching to five people, but really like dug into everything and they're all real deal investors for sure. And did you want, did you have like a favorite before you walked in? You never know who's gonna be there. I want Lori. Like did you have a favorite? It's interesting too, cause like I back channeled a lot of like references for people who had taken deals and stuff. And you know, I think that like, even my experience pitching too, I just, I can't have more respect for Lori, even going into it and also coming out of it. So I think I did kind of was excited about her, but she was like, this isn't the kind of coffee I drink. So it was kind of sad. What kind of coffee does she drink? She's like, I drink the weakest coffee. She's like, I basically drink like, like I've used like a teaspoon of coffee to make like 20 ounces of actual coffee. And so this is a very strong coffee. And so she was like. It's delicious by the way. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna add some of the cream in it.  Yeah, it ended up airing it like the exact same time. Yeah. How did that go for you? And have you been on since or was it just like a? Just that one time, it's funny cause like I always was skeptical about QVC because our customer is like a 25 to 35 year old woman. Like that is like the person who buys like the majority of our product. And it's just an older demographic that's on QVC or home shopping network. And it's just so interesting, like from whether you look at our sales data or from so many times of serving coffee to mass audiences, like as you approach 40, like after 40, your coffee habits like much more solidify relatively. And they're just people who like, you're gonna get people saying like this kid, there's no way this can be better than the French press I've been drinking every day for the past 20 years, you know? Versus like a 25 year old that's just like so excited by something different. And so I think that that's just something, it wasn't that same effect that we were kind of like holding calling. And they're like calling, right? They're like used to, like the consumer there is used to picking up the phone. Yeah, it's not the most internet savvy customer. It's just, it's gonna be a relatively older customer. And so like the companies that I know who have done really well on there definitely serve an older demo. So it didn't end up being kind of like the partner that we were looking for still a wonderful, very admirable operation over there. It was great to work with them, but just not, didn't reach our target demographic.  Totally. And so it's interesting that your own data backs that up in a way with the 25 to 35 year old woman being like the biggest market and demographic for your coffee. I'm curious if there are, in what you've seen different areas of the country that maybe outperform what you thought or do less than what you thought? That's such a good question because something that's so interesting about specialty coffee is that it's very regional. Like LA, we got like Groundworks, Bay Area, it's Blue Bottle, Chicago, it's Intelligence. It's like everybody, like these coffee companies just over index so much because their main mode of discovery or marketing is our cafes. And that's like typically how a roaster is able to really get an audience. And so if they go into CPG, they always over index regionally. And so that's something that's so unique about being like a digitally native coffee company is, and also I think the fact that we do serve the coffee with creamer and that it's a sweetened creamer. Cause I think that the brand itself, like sometimes people, especially investors wonder if it over indexes on the coast, which a lot of like high-end brands do. But per capita, we're like incredibly over index. Like Indiana is like an incredible state for us. Like it's so interesting how well we do and it's also not as totally urban related. So again, like per capita, of course our biggest markets are California, Texas and New York, but that's just kind of more because there's more people there. But I think that people all over the country follow great cafes and have maybe like one or two really great coffee shops in their town. But they want to try other things. And I think that this is such a great way to be able to experience that in your home, you know?  Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, it would be so fun. It's such a dream to be able to do that. I think we got really close to opening up one in LA, like to do a pop-up for about six months and it ended up falling through. And I remember this, this was like the year before the pandemic and I felt like really sad about it, but also felt like it was a huge lesson in understanding that this is such a different business than a CPG business. It's a complete, like trying to make my staff who are good at like creating digital ads and working with suppliers and doing all these things and working with retailers. It's like a completely different skill set than like hiring 20 people to come in and build out something. And I think it was just a huge lesson. And even though I think it all serves the brand in a very elegant way, operationally it's so different. So I was like, okay, maybe this is more of a five-year plan that we do something like this. And that I think it'll be such a wonderful extension of the brand, but it's a real investment for the business, even though one thing that's great about cafes is that they are actually, if you get them to work, incredibly great businesses. Like they're very profitable. They're, you know, it's a wonderful thing to get into, but COVID made us feel like we lucked out by that not happening, honestly. Yeah, I think you're right. I think like the way I look at it, there's this like headline now, it's called like Clicks and Bricks. And so the whole concept of you have your D to C play, all online, all digital, those are all your clicks, but there has to be, so less so now, but some sort of like pop-up brick-and-mortar concept where people can meet you, where like you can meet the customer where they are. And I think it's really interesting for brands, and I think it's so smart. I don't, you know, I think these pop-up, the pop-up concept is something that you can make amazing. You can invite influencers too. You can invite your loyal fans to maybe celebrities, investors, whoever might be there. And it's just a way to connect with them in a different way without signing like a five-year lease, and then having to figure out how to deal with that operationally. And I think that it would be just the most powerful and exciting vehicle for product innovation and testing. Yeah, 100%. Because the way that we even came out with our first, because we built the company to about a million revenue with just like the five pack of just classic coffee. There were no flavors, it was just one skew. And we were really struggling with like average order value when you only have one product. So we're like, we have to come out with another product for e-commerce to work. And the way that we chose it was that we were having all these pop-ups at offices, because at the time we were selling a lot into offices for them to have like of Vietnamese coffee Friday, like delivery every week. And we would do these pop-up activations for them. And so we'd have a pour-over bar, and then we would have these flavors. People love that. Yeah, exactly. And it was so fun. Oh yeah, we were in San Francisco at the time, and it was like, all these, we would just have like some lavender, mocha, rose petals, peppermint, and be like, you can just put it into your pour-over, and then it'll naturally infuse into it. And people were so excited. Yeah, people were so excited, had so much fun, except for the only thing was, is like, as the barista, I was like, you're putting too much in. Don't, it's gonna taste bad. Or you're not putting enough in. And I think that I was like, we should just manufacture it with the exact amount that there should be. And then it got, it was from those pop-ups that we were able to discover that. And you know, now, I mean, let alone retail, even e-commerce, retail, that's like years to be able to get a new product and see if it works. But e-commerce, it's still like, we have to make thousands of it, see if people like it, wait for product reviews to come in. And not only that, but like, you only get to hear from the noisy customers. It's nice to be able to talk with somebody and see what they find exciting about it. And so I look forward to being able to have pop-ups some day soon. What brought you down to LA? My sister and my brother-in-law live down here. So my sister moved here and they're entrepreneurs and they were the ones who like really pushed me into considering doing this. And one of the carrots was, you can just stay with us while you launch it. You know, this is back when I'm like still just like using that world bank money, you know? I came down here and lived with them for the first year of the business. And it's such a great place to launch a company. Oh my gosh, it's like such great talent and you're near manufacturing. I think that there's, especially for when you're trying to build a brand.  And I'm like, I'm just gonna go to like the arse district for a while before I work on this. Cause I just want to like feel inspired before, you know, it's such a great place to be. It's totally true. When you think about building a brand, what are some of the things that you move in the direction of? Like what's the strategy for your brand building? That's a great question. Especially right now, like as your company, you're kind of at that point. Yeah. Kind of the most important piece for you. Totally. I mean, that's the asset you're building at the end of the day, right?  And so for me right now, cause cash is so tight, it's like, I think I built the whole beginning of the brand by just really focusing on like an aesthetic and a feeling and quality of product and a great customer experience. And that was kind of all we could afford. And then having just raised the series A, I think it's like so exciting to be able to- Congratulations. Thank you. How big was that round? 8.5 million. And so I think investing in like below that skin deep, like it's not just like a great tasting, beautiful coffee brand, like how do we really bubble up like all of the great things that we do that people don't see day to day, whether that's the way that we work in our like supply chain or the way we treat employees or kind of what we stand for and like this origin of like what makes Vietnamese coffee so great. And I think that there's also like really digging into kind of the lifestyle. And you know, like I said about like this is kind of like, it's a sweet coffee typically and it's something that's kind of like a treat. And so like really building into that experience of it's not, maybe it's not your first cup of coffee because like you're just kind of like half awake and you're just like turning on a pot or you're opening up a cold brew from the fridge. But this is like your coffee break, you know? And I think that that's like how do we kind of build that brand and this like reward and this like wonderful kind of experience that is copper cow that's like kind of more than just another can of coffee or another bag of coffee. One cool thing I've seen brands do and maybe yours in terms of like sustainability is like you'll just partner with a nonprofit that suits them and then you'll create content around that partnership. And so an easy example is like, let's say October is the month of coffee, national coffee days October 1st. And so then for that month all sales percentage of them go to like this sustainable nonprofit but you're creating content around that whole story. Totally. And then you're just pushing it out and then people are supporting something bigger but now your brand is associated with not sustainability on paper but like legitimate here's how much we donated. It's just interesting for me to see like the lanes brands pick to move in. It's one of those decisions that once you make it you can't undo it and it has replication. It carries on. You're signing up for being held to a higher standard and all your decisions put into that. And I think that's what's exciting is that I think like internally we have really stuck to that. And then so how do we make sure that like we now do an outward facing storytelling around that? Why Copper Cow? Yeah, I was gonna ask what's the significance of the name and how you settled on that. First of all, I love it. I love like. The logo is amazing. I always judge brands logos. Thank you. And Nick would tell you if he hated it too. Oh my gosh. Well, let me tell you about it's I wish I had a better story, but I was like. Oh no. Oh, maybe we should. No, no, no. It's not a bad story. I think it's a nice thing to demystify starting a company maybe. I in general have trouble naming things. It's like one of the things that I think I've never gotten better at after starting the company. But I knew exactly how I wanted the company to look and feel. And I knew that we, one of the big differentiators is that we be selling creamer with our coffee and like no other specialty coffee company does that. And so I was like, you know, and I actually always had like this really big inspiration from cowgirl creameries. Like they had this the silhouette of a cow that was like really elegant. And I'm like, we should have this really modern cow that's made in the company will have like lots of geometric shapes. It'll feel really modern and clean. And the cow will be made out of geometric shapes. So I hired a Craigslist designer for $300 to make this logo that you see here today. That's amazing. You won the Craigslist logo. What a great investment. I mean, like I had to sift through a lot of portfolios to find her, she's incredible. And then I was like, and I knew that I wanted it to really stand out on a shelf. Cause at the time I'm still thinking like, yes, we're going to do econ, but like, how do I make it so that someone will walk by and pick it up? And I was like, I want there to be copper foil on the box and copper will be like the main, like this is going to be this copper cow that's just going to like kind of blindside you on the shelf. And so I described this to her and she came up with these concepts.  I was like, it's going to be this copper cow logo. Perfect. That's a great story. Accidental alliteration is phenomenal. Yeah, exactly. Then I was like, I don't know, it's like symmetrical. I was like, I don't know, it's like, it's like, yeah. And so it's a, the hard case sound is always good. That's amazing. Lucked out and haven't had to redo it. And now obviously I'm just looking at this. Yeah, the creamer comes with it, but you could easily partner with other brands to do oat milk or almond milk. Exactly. We're excited to look into doing partnerships. For the vegan community. So it's funny, I don't know if you know this or not, but in Peru, this is how they drink coffee also. Yes, yes, in Latin America. That's where I'm from. And so I grew up with my grandfather doing this, basically like the condensed milk in the coffee. And then we would dip bread in it. Oh yeah. I need it with bread. So it sounds very similar. Yeah, we would eat croissants. Typically like a croissant in Vietnam is served at the side of condensed milk and you just like dip it in, pre-deck it in. Magical. Yeah. When I was in Vietnam, I would always get almond milk latte and they'd bring me like these little cookies. Bro. Amazing. Are you saying we need to start bringing that into the States more? I'm just saying, maybe they come with cookies next. I think a Copper Cow Cookie would be a wonderful thing to have down the line. Copper Cow Coffee, Copper Cow Cookie. Copper Cow Cookware. Just keep going. Going back to it. Exactly. To go back to it, so you just raised some money. And so what is on, what are the deliverables now? Like what are the things you're working on now as it relates to growth? And so Whole Foods is awesome. That sounds like obviously that's going to carry. I'm super excited about Whole Foods. They're an incredible partner. It's funny, I remember I was talking to the buyer and I told her when I was first starting this company, my elevator pitch was it's a Vietnamese coffee that would be nice enough to be sold in Whole Foods. Oh, wow. It literally was. Yeah, I'm sorry, I think it's a pretty great moment. You manifested that. Yeah, and it's like it's so, like I said, Coffee's so regional, we're going to be one of, it looks like six companies that are nationally distributed that are coffee companies in Whole Foods. And I think they really recognize the innovation and the opportunity. I think investing in the brand, like we talked about, like how do we make that really come to life? I think partnerships is a huge part of that. But then I think that something that we haven't done before is that the website's always been really transactional and we're moving into a space of like, how does the website and the experience of buying online become part of the product? Because I think that what's so exciting about this format is we come out with a new flavor every month. What's the way that we can have the people really participate much more closely? It's like a community. Yeah. Like building, maybe texting. Exactly. If you set up a text buying. Yes. I think that there's like, and just like the way that you can kind of. You can see that. The other thing is that until literally a week ago, you could only buy the coffee with the creamer. So now we have it completely modular on the website. So. So this is right? Oh no. That's the coffee with the creamer. Okay. So now we have these packs where it's just the coffee and then just the creamer. So then. For the people who maybe prefer it with or without. Yeah, exactly. That's great data for you too. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's amazing. I can't wait to see what people do with their boxes. I'll just tell you like if it were me, I would just buy this. Yeah. I mean, honestly it's like I drink, I don't drink this, I drink both, but I don't drink them in the same proportion, right? So then like I, so I think it's really nice for some people to customize. So the fact that like we haven't had that available until now is something that we're really excited about and investing in like, you know, the data analytics to understand what people want. I know obviously getting coffee in general is getting more difficult with climate change and all these things. Have there been any challenges with your partnership, the co-op you're working with? So it's interesting about like Vietnam is actually relatively shielded from a lot of the climate change issues that today we're facing in Africa and South America because it's mostly around water access and Vietnam being tropical. It just, we don't have like the same problems with water access today. So that's not something that's a problem today. Other climate change things I'm sure will continue as like temperatures rise and whatnot for crops. But I think it's just more being like really trying to be like pulling the supply chain to where we want it to be. Cause right now it's like, yes, we have chemical free processing of the beans. We've got, we're paying farmers twice market rates and instilling all these like levels of quality that weren't there before, but we want to be the first organic certified Vietnamese coffee brand. And that's just going to take some time and effort. And you know, it's the education for them understanding like why that there is a customer for that. Cause it's not quite there domestically. There's just a lot of work that is hard to do when a country's on like hardcore lockdown, which is what's happening in Vietnam right now. Tell everyone where they can find you and support your amazing company that you built. CopperCowCoffee.com, yeah. Best logo store I've ever heard of. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. And it's amazing. Like it looks great. I just like love that people still call him. Did you hire her full time? So we hired her. That's a no. Did you give her equity? No, because she's just somebody who is like, she's like a living like designer. You know what I mean? She's like immediately started it. Shortly after has been able to kind of have her own freelance and she charges at a couple zeros now to what I did. And she's incredibly successful and couldn't like love giving her more work that way. That's great. So at CopperCowCoffee, it's the Instagram. Yep. Look out for National Coffee Day. That's exciting stuff. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Pleasure.


Dudeface, you mean statelons out of satellites. Look on NASA websites and search the loon project. 10,000 balloons released every year. Nothing goes to space. We live in a closed system piece. Dukeface, that, you're 100% wrong, right? Irrelevant if you're believe in flat earth or not, right? We don't, earth is not a closed system, right? This applies both to flat earth people and space people, right? Because energy comes into the earth, right? Through the sun, whatever you think the sun is, right? Coming through, as you mentioned, the filament, I saw, filament pop up, right? So there's energy being entering the earth. So if there's energy entering the earth, then the earth is not a closed system, right? Now the question is, where is that energy coming from? Is it space or is it something beyond the filament, as you called it? And if it's something beyond the filament, then what is it, right? And again, it's not a closed system, right?


This is uncomfortable for me. I'm usually a lot more upbeat and excited, but I'm honestly embarrassed. I don't know how to turn to but I'm just gonna come out and say it. I think my wife's cheating on me and I should clarify not with a person but with Twilight. I think she's watching these films and enjoying them behind my back. I'd like to think I run a pretty tight ship in this house with my wife and two children. The wife and I have tried to raise our kids with the best values and by values I mean watching the best films. We have our Shawshank Redemptions on one side. We have our aliens on the other. They're getting a good assortment of healthy films to digest. And yes, we let them enjoy sweets as well. There's frozen's in there. There's tangles in there. But I always thought my wife and I were on the same page when it came to films and how we approached them. I'm gonna take you back to 2008 when Twilight came out. My wife was pregnant with our first child at the time. And unlike the abortion that hit theaters, we were very much planning on having our kid. But I wanted the child. I wanted the baby to be raised right. And that meant we weren't gonna start them out in the womb hearing Bella swan swooning over some vampire or some werewolf. I don't know if the werewolf's in the first movie. I've only seen the first movie because we watched a pirated version. Shhh, they're listening. They're always listening. Calm down, Pearl Clutcher. I've invested tens of thousands of dollars over my lifetime already to Hollywood. Judge me if you will. But I think the much larger crime is showing your child, your precious little baby, Twilight. Years went by more Twilight's were released onto the world and we casually avoided them. We didn't even bother pirating the next few because the first one was so embarrassingly bad, so gigacringe level that I couldn't even withstand another blow from a second film. I thought my wife was in the same boat but it turns out she was cheating on me in the background in secret. All these years later, biding her time, waiting for a streaming service like Netflix to come out which would give her the opportunity to instantly have access to this vile monstrosity of a film franchise. So you could imagine my shock after coming home from putting in a hard day's work, unlacing and pulling off my work boots, unstrapping my overalls, I guess I work in a farm in this scenario, walking upstairs and seeing my wife in bed with another. And not just one, but an orgy of disgust, a vampire, a werewolf, an albino woman who can't act, all there entrancing her. The worst part about it is she denies the whole thing.  She said she's watching it for the lulls. She's watching it as a joke. She's in on it. She's ironically watching it and laughing at how bad it is. That's what she has the gall to tell me to my face. That's the equivalent of catching your wife in bed with another man and he claims he slipped and fell in. Unlike Edward when the sunshine hits him, our marriage was no longer sparkling. It was no longer the picture perfect affair it used to be. Now it's just simply an affair, a love affair, with this hacky franchise that for some reason has millions of adoring fans who are once again rushing out to watch it on Netflix. Choosing over every other movie in the history of mankind to watch these shitty films.  Like a predator hits on the young girls, the ones that are easily susceptible to his trickery, the young naive ones that are easily susceptible to his charms. These are the types of movies that we want our kids growing up with I think not. So I guess cast me out for showing my kids Harry Potter because there's magic in the movie in dark arts.   I'd like to not only lie to myself, but lie to you right now and say this was an isolated incident. One and done situation. No, no, this was only the beginning, the very next day, the next morning I wake up to see her in the bathroom at the sink doing up her hair while she has a tablet next to her on the counter with the second one playing. I don't even know what it's called, new moon? What does that even mean, new moon? More like new man because that's how I felt because now I'm no longer the man in her life. She's got two. She's got two that she's fighting for. She's the Bella Swan now and I'm just... I don't know what the film equivalent in Twilight is of the loser that gets tossed aside because I've never seen those shitty films. So how's it going now, you might ask Adam? Well, it's not going well. I'll tell you that much. She's on, I believe the fourth? Maybe the fifth one? I don't know how many there are.  She just can't stop watching the trainwreck. That's what she tells me. I can't look away from the trainwreck. Well, look away from the trainwreck. There's good trains out there. You don't need to watch them crash. Watch them, watch them leave, nine and three-quarter station. Watch them pull into Hogwarts. I guess the reason I'm putting this video out today is because I want to know if I've gone crazy. If I've gone mad or if the world has. Is it right for me to feel this way? Is it right for me to feel shame for my family and for my failures? Is not only a man, a husband and a lover? That's a person?   I want you to leave a comment right goddamn now and tell me what is going on. Should I leave her? I know you don't know her, but sometimes the honesty, the blunt force, honesty of a stranger is all you have to go on. So leave a comment, let me know. Like the video if you like me. You can relate a little and feel free to subscribe if you want to see further ridiculousness from my channel. Thank you and good night. Thanks for watching this during the day in which case ignore that. Thanks for watching the video. I really hope you know that that was all just satire. I'm not truly upset about my wife watching Twilight, you know, for the jokes. That part is true. She does claim that. I don't know if I believe her or not, but this was all for just, you know, silly fun. Anyway, like I said, feel free to subscribe. I put up videos constantly now. You can join me on Patreon at patreon.com slash AdamDoesMovies, throw me a dollar or five or whatever, or just hit the join button right here on YouTube and become a member. Get access to an exclusive show. It's a good time. We're having fun.


10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Spin kick. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Nice rhythm. Nice rhythm. Let's go. I'm doing my juice. I'm doing my juice. Let's go, people. Let's go. Let's go. Pedal to the metal. Keep working. 30 seconds. Every day now. 30 seconds. Drive it. Drive it. Drive it. Let's go. 20 seconds. 20 seconds. Let's go. Got it. You got it. Final stretch. 5, 4, 10, 9, 7, 6, 5. Hit that 90. Let's go. 90, 90. Let's get them 90s. You got it, B. Let's go, B. You got it. Let's go. Let's go, B. Let's go. Keep working. Let's go. Let's go. We got plenty of time. Let's go. 20 seconds in. You're working. Let's go. Let's go. Good job. I know y'all can work harder than that. Let's go. 30 seconds left. Just bring your stuff right over there. You can bring your stuff right over there for now. What's your name? You went away already? Did you go away already? Keep pushing. Good job, brother. No, she's going to bring it over there with her. Good job. Good job. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 10. Push, press. Push, press is next. That was very good in your spot. Let's go. Come on. Let's go. Come on. Let's go, B. Let's go, B. Let's go, B. Get in there, B. Let's go. Push, push, push. Stay right there, bro. You got it. Let's go. Come on, B. Let's go. Let's go. 30 seconds. Let's go. 30 seconds. 15 seconds. Let's go. We've got to row it. Let's go. 10 seconds. I'm going to keep it over 350 for one more minute. Let's get it.  You're going to pull it. You're going to pull it. And I know you got power. Let's go.  The rematch that always keeps happening. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. What you looking around for? Let's go, B. It's power. Pull it. Power strokes. Oh, I know I can pull better than that. Not speed. It's power. Y'all better get it. 20 seconds left. Keep pushing. 15 seconds. Look, trying to stop you. I know you're strong. Just break 90. Anyway, you can do chill ups of power. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Pull up on the scene, huh?  Let's keep working. Let's get it. Let's get it. Let's go. 30 seconds left. Let's go. We got a female going up. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. 20 seconds left. 20 seconds. Snatches. Lock out. Touch the floor. Good job. Good job.  Lock out. Lock out. Top. Chad, remember. Our way up. 25. 20 seconds. Someone spot Jesus. Someone spot Jesus. Wow. Good job. Keep going. Good job. Good job, brother. You got time. You got time. You got time. You're doing great. You're doing great. You're doing great. You psyched in. There you go. You locked in. You're locked in. Good job. All right. Take a break. The best I've seen you perform, bro. Good job. Where's Jesus?  He disappeared. Oh. You improved dramatically.  Five, four, one hit. Break's over. Let's go, guys. Finish strong. Let's go. Keep it going. 30 seconds. Let's go. Push it. 15 seconds.  Good job, bro. Good job.


So we've got a risk warning on the screen here. We'll cruise through that and get started. Apologies, by the way, for anyone who turned up to last week's disaster of a webinar. We'd switch webinar software to avoid sound problems, but somehow I managed to record a webinar with no sound. But you can hear me now, so we're all good. So a bit more stable in markets today. We've obviously not got the U.S. trading session because it's Martin Luther King Junior Holiday in the United States, and so the New York Stock Exchange is not open. So typically the pattern on these kinds of days when the U.S. isn't trading is that we get all our activity in Europe kind of early on and then start to slow down a bit from here on in. That certainly doesn't have to be the case because of the volatility of oil prices. Markets are literally tracking oil up and down, so at the moment oil is well off its lows, but that could obviously change as it has. But most of last week we saw days when it was right at the bottom, near the lows of the day, and then equities were well in the red, all bounced back, equities came back, and then we did back and forth several times within the day. So great trading environment, but in terms of being able to call where the market finishes at the beginning of the day, where it's going to finish, it's very difficult, very choppy. So for those who are not familiar, the general format here is that we'll just look through some of the major markets, some of the more popular markets, if you look here on our platform, then we've got our popular products list. The kind of things that are in there, that's what we're going to concentrate on, but more unusual that you were looking at, or just some other topic you wanted to discuss. This is an interactive webinar, so you can send a chat either to the group or just directly to me, and we can answer it that way. Obviously if you send it directly to me, then the rest of the group doesn't see you to ask a question. Now let's start within disease. As I mentioned, I think the main driver today is the drop to 2003 lows in Brent, but then the subsequent recovery, leaving us kind of flat as cash indices stand. Obviously the closing time of orange is slightly different, leaving our products in slightly the green here. Let's look at the UK. Now you can see that we flashed down below the August lows here, so we're right at the bottom of the trading range. So these ranges obviously never hold perfectly, so say this was the low back in July, just to take an example, we found a peak just above that, chopped down, made a peak just above it, but you can see that it's this general level of resistance that was holding the market down. Here we turned down a few pips below, a few points below, but nonetheless it was that same level holding it. So same thing here, this was the August low, we flashed below it a bit, we could push a bit lower, but as long as we can close above, generally in the sort of 6800 type of tendency, then we've got a good chance of a rebound here, because this really is the line in the sand. For those who have read the mid-morning note in the platform here, this is the line in the sand that a lot of people are looking at across indices, so we'll look at the US markets as well. Really, this is kind of the boundary between a rangebound market and a downtrending market for the moment. If we can hold above here, good scope for a rebound, but obviously it was a rough finish to last week where we've been chopping around above the 5900 level for a while, and then suddenly dive right back down to below these August lows. So not a difficult finish, but still getting a little bit of a rebound today so chance of some support coming in. So the general bias here, I think, is that below the moving averages we're seeing, as I mentioned here on the screen, we've got this long-term range support, which is what's preventing us from going all out bearish because we do have these downward sloping, lower high and lower low on the weekly chart as well. So rangebound conditions with a bearish bias suggesting we could eventually break to the downside. Now, what could determine whether we hold these lows fundamentally is the focus obviously have been oil prices. Difficult to call whether oil will be up or down each day, but if we see the new pressure on oil prices, that's certainly going to be a catalyst to push to the downside. And this evening, so sort of early hours tomorrow, we had the release of a number of Chinese pieces of data, GDP for China, China's industrial production, and Chinese retail sales. So that's whether those numbers can show some renewed signs that maybe there's a bit of a bottoming out in industrial production and maybe that the retail sales numbers can continue to improve, then that would be positive. If we saw, I see it worth an expected industrial production number particularly, I think, that really could be the renewed downside. If you remember the couple of weeks ago when we first kicked off trading for this year, it was firstly the manufacturing sector data on the Monday and then following the service sector data later in the week that was the catalyst for some sharp down days in the market. So we've got kind of more data on those sectors, the retail sales telling us more a little bit about internal demand in China and the retail sector obviously, which is essentially a big component of the services sector and industrial production which is obviously telling us what's coming out of the manufacturing sector. GDP, this is to some extent the case with a lot of countries where there's numbers a little bit fudged, China even more so than most I think, and so we can't necessarily put a lot of stock in where this number comes in slightly ahead or below of expectations because it is, I think most people agree to some extent politically influenced. So that's going to be a big catalyst, I think, going into the rest of the week but then from there on in, we're not hearing as much from China. So we've seen a bit of a pattern last week where Chinese markets have not been such an influence over, that is in the Chinese stock market, its end of day performance has not been really so much of a correlation to European markets, even US markets. If we put up the US 30 here, we've seen more that the European markets have been reflecting more what's been happening with the Chinese Yuan, the Chinese currency. So that's probably going to be a big catalyst for the rest of the week in terms of equities. I would say we've got this data, it's going to set the precedent overnight and then what happens with the Yuan going forward. Something that happened today was that the Chinese government have introduced restrictions on foreign banks holding Chinese Yuan, which is sort of, you know, they basically added a reserve ratio, a certain amount of money the banks have to hold with the central bank of China if they're doing some dealing in the Chinese Yuan. So that's sort of just with the idea of restricting Yuan speculation and that could act to hold up the Chinese Yuan depreciation for a little bit and that would be supportive of markets, so that would be a positive catalyst if we see the Yuan turned down again despite these efforts by the government. That could be the catalyst for us to break those August lows to the FTSE and break through these September lows for the Dow Jones and as obviously as we trade at US 30. I think a first area of support should we push lower, we'll just be where we rebounded to when we had that large sell-off day that kind of called the bottom in August. Where we closed, that will be a consideration because that was even after a massive rebound and we closed back in that same vicinity. Basically in the sort of 15, 750 area, I think could be a next area of support. Below there, then I think we're just looking for an outright challenge of the August low. To the top side, the last real high that we formed on the daily chart was up here at 16.625. So should the market manage a decent rebound up to there, we could find some more selling interest in that kind of area for another go at 16,000 and below. But again, just like the UK markets, we're in the technical indicators if you like, appointing us towards a downward bias because we're below that 200 DMA. We're well below even the 20 day-moving average and we've got these low highs and lower lows being formed on the weekly chart giving us a general downward bias. But we've got to be aware of the support that's coming in which is pretty strong support from that September low. So going long, around the 16,000 mark in the US 30, a bit of a risky proposition because you're going against these downward trends, nonetheless it is strong support. So perhaps with a little bit of a confirmation, perhaps from a big reversal on the daily chart or indeed if we can manage the week with a higher close, that would go some way to say that we're managing to push back into the range. So back above this 16.25, which was this peak reached in January, not for the month of January, but a lower high reached in January. Then I think then we're pushing back into that 17,000 round number and the lows that we broke down quite spectacularly at the start of the year, around the 17,100 mark. Another thing that will be dictating US markets this month is the number of earnings that are coming out. This week is kind of gearing up a bit. We've got a few more big banks releasing earnings. A few Dow Jones companies next week when it really kicks into gear. Big focus obviously will be Apple because that's actually been underperforming quite significantly recently. Apple has been a laggard in this downturn rather than the leader. So it's showing sort of some relative weakness to the Dow Jones. Investors will be, because so many large funds hold Apple shares, if Apple starts performing badly, they're going to have to liquidate those shares and then they're going to look around and think where else they would want to put them and maybe they're not going to feel too encouraged and maybe that money doesn't go back to work in the stock market until lower levels. So I've got a similar sort of pattern going on here where this is actually something akin to a choppy head and shoulders reversal here in Apple. We haven't got a full dip down to the neckline here, but it could be something like that is the head, that is the right shoulder. So that again is this August low again for Apple. Below there, if Apple rolls over with the general market, then we could be finding ourselves below that 200-week SMA, which has been supporting the price for a long time. We could find ourselves right the way back down to these lows formed in July, which would be a big drop, because we reached as high as 135-ish, that would be taking us back down to 50. That would be Apple wiping out more than 50% of its value. So that would be difficult for the overall market in my opinion is to perform well if Apple was to do so badly. Jumping over to currencies, one of the worst performing currencies of late has been the British Pound. Let's have a look at cable here. Here were the lows from April of last year. We just crushed straight through there with barely any signs of support. Should we get a bounce back up to that? I think that could be support turn resistance, although it didn't really act too much as a support the next time around. That could be an area of selling interest. More in the short term, though, we've got this previous level around the 143.50 area that held the market up for a few days before a big sell-off on Friday. So a little rebound up to there could find some selling interest back through there and back through the Friday high. I think that could be when we start when we push all the way back up to this 146. 145.70, rather. 155 is obviously a big round number possibility as well. But if we scale out to this weekly chart, we can see solid downtrend in cable here. And then if we pull right up to the monthly chart, this is when it gets interesting. I'd certainly recommend if you are a cable trader to check out Michael Houston's report on a possible long-term support in cable. It's downright at this 143-type mark where we are at the moment. That's the lows from 2010. So you can see that that's basically where the market is right now. So you just look at this range. Every time it hits the top of the range and the 170 mark rolls over, every time it gets down to the 140 mark, it bounces or thereabouts. But this is the kind of sideways range we've been in for a long time. And for those more of a conspiracy-type mindset, that's the way central banks like it. They try to talk the currency up and down, change policy accordingly to keep currencies within a stable range. Central banks don't like a massively accelerating currency. They don't like a really fast depreciating currency. Sometimes they view currencies as overvalued and they want to see a steady depreciation but nothing too dramatic. And likewise, we could get to the point where the bank thinks it gets a bit uncomfortable that whole fast pound is losing ground against the US dollar and starts to change their wording appropriately to kind of unsettle a few short sellers. And that's when we can see the beginnings of the bottom around this 140 mark. So certainly bear this short-term trading. You've got to say the trend is very much to the downside as we saw in that daily chart. Lower lows, lower highs in the weekly, well below the 200-day moving average, RSI well into oversold territory, which does risk a bounce, but we've been oversold for a while now. We've been oversold since the price was at $148. We're back down at $143 now. So 500 pips of the market being oversold is not necessarily a catalyst to buy, but you've just got to be aware of the risk. Data-wise, we do have a bit out this week for the UK. Tomorrow, we've got CPI. And then on Friday, we've got retail sales. And of course on Wednesday, we've got the unemployment data, including average earnings. So one of the things the Bank of England have been quite down on is the fact that after getting that spike in average earnings growth, it's kind of tapered off a bit since then. And so we were looking at earnings over 3% a year. Now they're down at just over the expectation this time around on Wednesday, as it has dropped down to 2.1%. So if that comes to fruition, we've all, you know, earnings drop even lower down to two or even less than two.  That earnings number is going to be a big one. But nonetheless, I mean, inflation is very weak, but it's hard to really see the CPI number on Tuesday changing the dial too much on the expectation for inflation. It's just, even if it's .2, you know, obviously it's going to be a bit supportive of the pound. If it ends at big .1, you know, it's slightly negative of a pound. But overall, we know inflation is going to be low for the time being, especially with all prices making decade lows. Switch over to the euro. Now, tricky one in the euro at the moment. It does, you know, and since that massive move on December 3rd during the LaMaria Draghi press conference shot all the way up to above 110, but 110 has basically been capped in a price action since. It dropped down to just above .7. That was about a 61.8 retracement of that big move from the low to the high on December 15th. And we've pushed back into this 110, but just not really got past it. It was almost so 108. 109.87 is kind of the resistance that we have really been specifically rebounding off on the last one, two, three, four, five attempts.  But we've got significant overhead resistance from the 200 day and this 110 level. So the market's struggling to get through it and the trend is officially lower as I define it while below that 200 day moving average and while we're making a lower low and lower high on the weekly chart. So it's a bit like, you know, the trend is turning you to sell but you've got this strong suspicion that this trend is going to reverse. So to my mind in that situation, inaction generally best until we get some confirmation one way or the other. So we're in that 108 to 110 range. Now you can obviously buy and sell at the bottom of the range and the top of the range with tight stop losses. But in terms of something more directional, you really want a, probably at this stage, a weekly close above or below one of those levels. Golly Yen's been very active recently because just because we've been seeing a bit of a sell-off as we previously spoke about in equities. And so the Yen is a safe haven and Dolly Yen is something that correlates very well with U.S. bond yields and indeed U.S. stocks has been selling off. And so that's been a big, people piling to the Yen as a safe haven and it's taken quite down below 117, but we're finding a bit of support in that area. You know, the big kind of line in the sand here is where we saw that massive rebound just above 116 in August. And obviously we're talking about an August low here and Dolly Yen, just the same as we're talking about an August low in equities. It's a similar deal really. We did have this triangle pattern which we seem to have concluded to the downside, but it still could end up being, if you extend the chart out this way and you draw this line in here, what you can kind of see is that actually it could be a sort of either just a kind of rectangle pattern or just a kind of downward sloping triangle with a flat bottom. And so then it's in this kind of 116 area that we're looking to break to the downside. And that's been holding since November 2014. So that's a big area of support right there. You know, I think what can push us down through that? You know, just continued risk aversion that send equities lower, break through the August lows in equities, and we're pretty much heading down in similar fashion with Dolly Yen, I'd say, just because it doesn't look like the Bank of Japan given the relative lack of success in the current quantitative easing program has brought the Japanese economy probably just aren't too keen to add to stimulus. And I would actually say something that's not been talked about too much. An outside possibility for this year in terms of a sort of shock to markets would be the Bank of Japan just abandoning their QE program just because it hasn't worked. That would be quite a shock and Dolly Yen would drop, but I'm not going to use it. Some other big FX movers, but I've not had any specific requests from you guys on that, so I'm going to switch over to commodities. Obviously, the bridge one is Miss Crudall. We saw the lowest since, I think, it was November 2003. Our price is slightly different, but yeah, it looks like, you know, this price down here, that's where we've got to. So, you know, we've obviously taken out the 2008 lows, we're basically coming down to test these really low levels from back in 2001. Got to believe we're close to a bottom in Brent, but, you know, given that markets can still swing around by a few dollars in a day, each one of those dollars is a high percentage of your opposition. And so, if you are going long crude, you know, you'd certainly need the capital in your account to withstand large drawdowns while the market finds its bottom, because, you know, it's almost certainly going to push past your entry point at some point. Very difficult to catch a bottom in the market. You know, if you're trying to pull up, if you're trying to bet on a bet on a 27, you've got to be aware that the market could drop to 20, in which case that's 25% of your account. So, obviously, especially when using leverage, you know, that could be lethal. So you need to have that math calculated if you are going long-term on oil. Probably a slightly more conservative approach is to look on the short-term charts and look for a bit more of a clear sign that actually a bottom is being put in. No sign of that really at the moment, other than the fact that we're off the lows today, but that's a very temporary phenomenon. I mentioned in the chart forum post here that there's a few layers of potential resistance. Excuse me. I'm already designed to come off the first one that I liked this morning, which is around the sort of 28, 78, kind of basically just that low, formed on the 14th. You know, that sort of general pattern of a lower low, lower high, come up. Where do you find the lower high again the next time in the vicinity of the previous lower low? So, Mark, it's good to roll straight off from here. If we do manage to push high, we've got this defining trend line which has three successful touches. We can get that just around the 30 round number. So, a confluence of potential resistance here from this low, this defining trend line, and the round number could find a few sellers in that vicinity. If we get through there, then I think that would probably, because it is a confluence and potentially significant resistance area, we could carry us all the way up to 3120. And then I think if we get through 32.05, basically the 32 round number, I think that would be, you know, because the market is so heavily short, I think probably a lot of covering positions in that kind of area and that could carry us all the way back up to 3580, which are these lows from December. Obviously the main catalyst to the draw down in all at the moment is the talk about around sanctions being lifted over the weekend. So basically around pretty much good to go now on exporting oil. So that means a lot more oil flooding and already oversupplied market. We'll have to see other landscape changes over the coming months because already some talk of Russia perhaps producing less oil this coming year. So if Russia can work alongside OPEC, even if it's not really passively but just sort of both doing the same thing at the same time, a number of OPEC nations already expressed their desire to cut production. So if Russia get involved, that could be enough to convince Saudi Arabia to do the same. And then we're in a very different environment where actually we've got enough producers cutting production to influence supply and then we could push back up to that 60 mark again in fairly quick time. Given how quickly we've dropped down, you know, a quick drop in the market typically corresponds to a quick rebound. So last one here before we finish, look at gold. If you'd been checking the chart forums, you'd see that I had mentioned this, the low from July 2015 as a potential confluence of potential support because it was on this big move higher from the low was also the 61.8% retracement pretty much and a confluence of this broken down trendline and this upward sloping potential trendline here, all pretty much in that same area and we did get a nice tidy bounce from there. It carried us about $25 just in the space of a day. So that did act as nice support but we've done the first easy move. The next bit is actually taking us back up to the 110 area. That could be a top year affair. For those who haven't got involved yet, could be some potential for the market to drop down to the 1080 again. But obviously that's been quite a strong rebound already. So it may even not get down to 1080 again. Still obviously below the 200 day moving average and really an unconfirmed trend. So the fact that we've formed a higher high on the weekly chart helps you a little bit in going long because it's not such an outright downward market but nonetheless formed a lower low and below the 200 day moving average. So risks of trying to bet on a recovery back to 110 and above but it does sort of look like that way at the moment to me. I've mentioned up here that this looks like a failed break of 1073 that July low. So we tried to push down, chopped around, but didn't really make any headway below it and now because we haven't managed to do it, we're heading up again. Okay. That's it for this week's webinar. Thank you very much for attending. Good luck with the trading this week. Just a little turning out.