How to Compete and Win Against the Giants in your Industry, with Tyler Ornstein, Ep 182

Standing apart from your competition is something we hear a lot about as entrepreneurs, but it can be easier said than done. This is especially true when you’re in a market with heaps of competition from industry giants.

 

Even so, there are people making it happen, including this week’s guest, Tyler Ornstein, founder of Tylers Coffees®. Coffee is the second largest industry in the world, second only to petroleum, so there’s no shortage of “giants” to compete against. Yet Tylers Coffees® has been around for sixteen years, is available in 500 retail locations as well as online, and now ships 40,000 units of coffee a month. Clearly, being the David in an industry packed with Goliaths didn’t prevent Tylers Coffees® from becoming a mass success.

 

Tune into this episode to hear Tyler’s tips, lessons, and strategies that any entrepreneur in any industry can use to successfully wage war on a business battlefield full of “giants.”

It’s Not The Coffee, It’s The Acid

Tylers Coffees® were conceived when Tyler was just 14 years old. He and his father often bonded over coffee, until his dad was told, by his doctors, that he couldn’t drink coffee anymore. It was due to his stomach issues. The acid in the coffee was  exacerbating those issues. Instead of simply rolling over, however, Tyler’s dad, a chemist, figured out a way to brew organic, acid-free coffee that he could drink.

Validate Your Idea First

Even at age 14, Tyler recognized that other people with stomach and digestive issues who had to avoid acidic foods might be interested in his dad’s acid-free coffee. So, he rode around the neighborhood on his bike, knocking on doors and offering free samples to neighbors. Tyler remembers following up with a particular little old lady, who told Tyler the coffee did not hurt her stomach. She asked how she could obtain more, and what it cost. Tyler continued to hear from people with similar experiences, which gave him proof of concept and inspired him to start selling Tylers Coffees®. What Tyler did--testing his offer’s viability--is a step new entrepreneurs often skip, to their detriment. In this episode, Tyler describes a simple, affordable way to test your product’s viability.

How Do You Compete With Starbucks And Folgers? You Don’t!

Attempting to directly compete with the “giants” usually leads to price wars, since there’s really nothing differentiating you from the competition. Instead of competing directly with the major coffee brands, Tylers Coffees® caters to health conscientious coffee drinkers--specifically, people with digestive issues who can’t tolerate the acid in normal coffee. As a result, Tyler can charge more for Tylers Coffees®, help people enjoy a beverage they may not otherwise be able to, and provide a superior product.

You Don’t Need Money, You Need Customers

When an aspiring entrepreneur tells Tyler they “need money,: his next question is usually, “Do you have customers?” These days there are lots of ways to acquire money for product creation, but what good is any product if there aren’t people willing to buy it? It may sound counterintuitive, but the more you focus on a market you can serve, the better your odds of creating a product people want to buy.

Retail Is Dead...Or Is It?

Because lockdowns and COVID restrictions make shopping at a retail location challenging, many retail sectors are suffering. Online shopping as a whole contributes to this dynamic as well. But that still doesn’t mean retail, as a whole, is dead. In this episode Tyler offers tips on getting your products into retail stores, including whether it’s currently worth the effort to do so with your particular product. He also shares what it took to get Tylers Coffees® into Natural Grocers.

Outline of This Episode

• How to tell whether you’re “entrepreneuring” correctly [4:01]
• Why growing a business is like raising a child [7:24]
• Shipping coffee from a bedroom [14:21]
• The one question Tyler asks aspiring entrepreneurs [19:05]
• An easy way to test your product’s viability [27:17]
• The retail side of selling [37:17]
• From sixty employees to two [49:18]

Resources & People Mentioned

• https://tylerscoffees.com/
• Tylers Coffees on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tylersacidfreecoffee/
• Tylers Coffees on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TylersCoffee/
• Tylers Coffees on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tylerscoffees
• Email Tylers Coffees at [e-mail]

Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

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