YouSaid · the spoken record

Todd Carmichael

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2026-01-12
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2026-01-12
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  1. “Know what he was talking. I got an image in my mind that it's like we have these mosaic tables, they're broken pieces of La Colombe ceramic, you know, that... Put together to make this mosaic top. So I would say that the grout is luck. It's what holds all those broken pieces together. Whatever percentage that is. Because obviously they would mean nothing if it weren't for the grout, right? They wouldn't hold together. So I would say, I guess 35% of it's luck? Good fortune or destiny, or the gods, or because it's true, man. That luck begins with Green River, and whether he was wearing a goldvast or not, I'm not sure, is meeting JP. Huge pizza luck. Had I not gone that night, there would be no La Col”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Well, I think the first and foremost is, you know, I can guarantee the future of my children. And that was a big thing for me. I always wanted to have a family and I wanted to be able to provide for them. What you learn, though, is that there's no such thing as security ever. There's no amount that will make you secure. That's just something that you then have to live with. Lets me make a change if I see things I don't like. I can fund programs. I can do things like that. And food Food food. I still, I'm 56 years old and I can go to his store with my wife and I'm walking in front of the cart and I'll spin around and I say to her, I can buy anything in this store. God damn it, that's awesome. I could buy anything in this store. And there was years and years and years that wasn't possible. I guess the most important one is that”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “It did, but you know what? In retrospect, it didn't. It was very helpful. We had to go to the next level of growing up. And we ended up getting a lot of really good executive people from it. And a real different way of looking at our business. So it was like, oh, there was a whole bunch of maturity that we got out of that deal that I'd still say, I would do it again.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “That's exactly how I see it. I don't know how smooth or awkward I was, but I said, I want to take coffee into the future and I want you to be a part of it. In order for that to happen, you need to take out this VC. He said, Great, let's meet him. And we met him, and he did.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “I'd met him months earlier. He as well as JP and I are concerned about the refugees coming across the border from Syria into Turkey. He's a craftman, so you make things you understand, right? I mean, he understood the complexities of Greek yogurt and why that mouthfield is so important. He understood the beauty of clean milk. He understood clean ingredients. So I go in my lab and I create the very first draft latte. Drill a hole in a can, I put a volleyball valve in it, I put coffee, I put milk, I seamed the can, and I jacked the contents up with nitrous oxides to make it cell foaming, and I bring it up to New York. And I said, this is going to be the most expensive coffee you've ever tasted. And yeah, he loved it”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “That's true. You know, first we agreed we would need an angel investor. It would have to be someone who's craft-based who believes in behaving themselves in the world and creating value for other people and participating in communities and being decent. And so I thought of hey, there's that Hamdi Ulakaya guy.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Yeah, so it was a private equity company, me and JP. So I just said, we're out here. We're going to buy you out. I gave him a sum too, actually. I told him how much, double.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “We also need to create ready to drink drinks that include milk and hopefully one if I can invent it, one that's frothy. And they said, nah, we don't want to do that.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “I mean, there's a couple things that were going on, too. Is that I became fascinated with this thing that wasn't being done anywhere yet called Cold Brew. I had this idea that you could brew coffee, put it in a bottle, and sell it to stores. So that was just starting. So I knew when JP and I believed in the ready-to-drink coffee. So we had that. We had the cafes. So we looked at each other and went, man. So we started the old investor discussions and it was so awful because we have different blood types to such a degree that it just was so difficult. And we landed on one. We did the deal. And that lasted 52 days till the first board meeting. I said, okay, I believe that cold brew is going to be a thing and La Colombe needs to be the father of it.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Know. They're called categories, right? So you never abandon the energy that you're giving to one category because you've added a second. And we have five now. And you realize that you don't have to leave your first child because you're having a second one.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Know, and if you look at the top line revenue of Black Colomb, it is intense hockey stick that started in 2008 where he just completely decided that we were going to dominate in this area.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “2007 and 2008 was the major fault line in the company. It was a massive shift in everything. See, we thought for a long time that the 19th Street Cafe was just an anomaly. It wasn't due to the fact that we're any good at what we do. It's just that we got lucky and we were really afraid of making a second one because it would prove everyone that the first one was just an anomaly. So to be honest with you, we were scared Because what if it were a failure And so we finally decided to face our fears, and we opened one in New York. Like we devolved in isolation, that we've got to this point that we're going to turn this thing into a true business. We could become the reference coffee roasting company in the world if we start right now.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Well, okay, so I built my own little hut and I arrived with zero money and just a little backpack and a surfboard. There's a giant wave not too far away called King Kong. I fished and I surfed my brains out. And then I wrote a book. And it was a piece of junk, let me just tell you, it was trashy. You would not make it past the first chapter. But I think I did that like chopping wood. It was therapeutic and I wanted to prove to myself that I could write something, right? So I did. And so there was a lot of stuff from my past that I never dealt with. And it helped a lot.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “I don't want to ruin this thing. You can have it all. Wow. I was just, and this is the kind of brother this guy is. He could have easily because I would, I mean, when I was saying it, my hands were shaking. And when I get that way, I stop eating so I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping. So I just drove myself into this really, really tough place.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “I think that I started to I was suffering from my brain. You know, I was a hard driving guy and I was just having difficult times. I just said, oh, so I actually went to JP and I felt really bad. I said, I was going to end up like my father, right? I thought I was going to go mad. Just total 24 7 anxiety mania. I just couldn't sleep. I couldn't, you know, it's just really, my furnace was just burning really hot. I just got in a space where I didn't think I was going to be okay. And there was a lot of problems back home with my mother and my sisters and my dad. You know, my dad had killed himself and it was just like, and it was just loads of pressure. And then I got involved in bad relationships. And it just like, I wasn't managing well, right? I went to JP and I said, you can have my shares.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Well, I mean, first, let's use Haiti for an example. What you realize is that there is strength in numbers. Once you get the faith and confidence of farmers, then you can do pretty much what you want. The problem is in places like Haiti or in Africa or even El Salvador, there are loads of gringos that show up making promises and then never come back. You have to show a resilience that you're coming back time and time and time again. And once you've done that, again, Haiti, I was called Amblanc, a white guy. But now I'm called LeBlanc. I'm the white guy. They know I'll come back. So then they can buck the system. And traders that are trading over borders or they're taking big line share and it ends up in some Maxwell House blend. They're looking for giant volumes. And we're not disrupting that. We're looking for this creme de la creme. And often they leave you alone.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “And they say, fine. But you say El Salvador? Oh, indeed. Haiti? Oh my God. Haiti, there were times that I felt, yeah, this could be it. I'm probably going to not make it out. I have here alive.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Well, in the case of Brazil, no. Brazil is a very sophisticated country when it comes to farming. And you're not going to really run into it there.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Nothing, very little, and you have an idea that that's what's happening, but when you go and you visualize it, you see it. And you see the eagerness that farmers have to work with you because that chain of events that you described can sometimes be 10 or more deeper than that.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Well, then you spend time on the farms, and we started figuring out right away exactly what's making the better coffee and what's making the inferior stuff, right? We start immediately getting interested in varieties and growing styles and all that, which is not a big giant leap. The real key is how do you get all these boxes from, let's say, a mountain in Rwanda to Philly? This is the challenge and the processes that it has to go through So, that is the real big first to step. It's like figuring out how to do that. How to put a supply chain together. And once you get that, then you go, all right, then you feel confident walking into Haiti and going up in the mountains and saying, all right, let's look for some farms.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Oh, that's right. So I think we met him through chocolate. I think we were playing around with chocolate. He's got a farm. We go to the farm. And once you do that, then you become hungry for it.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “Well, I mean, one of the first ones was, strangely enough, we met a Swiss guy who owned a farm in Brazil. Remember that? What was that Swiss guy's name?”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “Yeah, the demand started picking up. And then it was clear that our timing was right, so it dovetailed right into, let's go look for ourselves, right?”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “It was the 90s we started weaning off that because it was clear that at first we were the only ones looking for that type of coffee. So we had everything was”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Street cred, street cred. We're serving some of the greatest chefs in the country. And if we were going to have a brick and mortar space, which we really felt we needed one to have some street presence, we needed to execute on a level that no one else could”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “Because espresso in America to that point was an abrasive liquid. It was not to be consumed without tons of sugar or milk on it. And we wanted to break that mystique. So we were looking for something that was European, but like nine levels higher. We wanted something nutty, sweet that was like molasses. So that's what really guided us.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “No, because we explain to them I go, chef, coffee is a spice, and that's all I had to say. Because you could buy saffron for nothing and you'd have to use like a bird's nest amount in your dish to make it taste anything like saffron. Or you get this stuff from Pakistan or Afghanistan where you use a pinch, but it's going to cost you And they understood that”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  28. “He was the four seasons, right? Y That's right. And we did the same deal. We just walked in the back. So we're here to make coffee for chef. And he said, bring it today. So that night, we were being brewed in two of the best restaurants in the country. And by the end of that week, we're getting calls from major players in New York and everyone's saying, what did this coffee want to try? It was all the Frenchies.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  29. “So we went and we tore the grinder down, cleaned it, tore the espresso machine, cleaned that, put our coffee into it, made a beautiful, beautiful coffee, and then said, where's Chef? We went upstairs. He was screaming. He was a screamer. It was the 90s, right? Wanted a note. And we said, we're here to make coffee for you. And we just put it in front of him and you just stepped back. And so that's how we got the Becfana that day.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  30. “Well, I'll tell you about the first one, and then that started the whole kind of process. So it was October 15th. We walked on the street. We went to the number one restaurant in the country at the time, Le Be We went into the back of the kitchen. Someone stopped and asked us, What are you doing here? And we said we're here to make coffee for chef. So they just assumed maybe that was an interview.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  31. “And part of it too is it's you. If you love it, then that's the one you should stick with. So first, we wanted to please ourselves. And then you introduced this to some of the best palates in the world. And they like it. You're good. I think it's really hard to make food and beverage for everybody. It's like Kurt Fonnegut wrote for his sister. He wrote for one person. And I think that when I make food and beverage, I have like one or two people I think about.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  32. “We have just behind me obviously the podcast folks can't see it, it's the original roaster. It's a little cylinder. It holds about a half a pound of coffee and you put it on a gas stove. You put your green coffee into it and you turn it by hand. And then you dump it all out into a colander and you use some kind of cool air to cool it down. And if you would have gone to JP's apartment at the time up in Sprutt Street before we settled on all the buys we would make, we had hundreds of bowls of this coffee everywhere. And we were hand grinding it and copying it and hand grinding it, copying it. We built up our first blends there.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  33. “No, no, no. In fact, we built the cafe by our, like, with no permits. Like, I did all the wiring, all the plumbing. Like, we asked forgiveness rather than permission on pretty much anything. But the big deal was if someone would force a giant bag into that chute and it would get lodged. And so I would take the freight elevator up, go up on the roof, and we would drop bowling balls. Remember Jamie? Dislodge the trash.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  34. “Yeah, and it was really clear that we weren't be able to open. I mean, it was just this, the nightmare scenario in my mind was like, oh, they came this close, right? So I went and rented a jackhammer. And I jackhammered a hole into a garbage chute that runs the outside of the building. And I think it's about 20 stories high. And I piped the, then cemented the piping into the garbage suit and told JP to fire it up. And now it takes forever to get that whole chute heated up. But once you get hot air to rise, it just sucks it like a syringe.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  35. “We didn't have the ventilator. It was not gonna work. The way the building is formed, the way the wind comes down and the barometric pressure. Was that moment where I thought we were ready to open? I mean, we had now spent all, I think we had maybe $500 left in the bank account. I mean, there wasn't anything left. We needed to go. And we had all the green there. Everything was ready to fire up.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  36. “Well, we ran our first load, and it was clear that with that environment in that part of town, you couldn't roast in that cafe.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  37. “We were traveling all the way through Italy. I'll always remember it because we had an envelope, we had travelers' checks. And we would go directly into a factory and begin negotiating like on the floor. And we went, okay, we'd like those two espresso machines. We want, we negotiate, negotiate. And we go, all right, take the box off. How about if we don't take the box? Like, and we would hump these machines into his dad's car. And we found the roaster in northern Italy, paid for it, strapped it to a pallet, and watched it ship.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  38. “Was actually two. You know, this area of the town was really suffering. Businesses would come and go so quickly that there was spaces almost everywhere. But they were all filio spaces, so they're really narrow. So we found two side by side. So we took them both and we just smashed the wall between them and started working.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  39. “So, the two main beautiful roads in the city right now is walnut and chestnut. They were pretty much closed down. There were no cafes in the city. You know, it's a city of a million some people and there wasn't one cup of coffee. And so JP and I, we went and I said, hey, remember JP? We sat and we had some beers together? And I chose to interpret everything that we'd seen this way, that if you were going to take an elevator ride and you were looking to get altitude, you want to get in on the ground floor and that Philadelphia was displaying that it is here on the ground floor and it can't stay this way and will not stay this way.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  40. “Yeah, I had a closet that was big enough for me to lay in. And I told him I wasn't going to leave until he agreed. Although I did respect how hard that would be on him. We had a long conversation. I could feel that he was leaning because let's get real. You know, there could be no La Colome without GP. There could be no Todd without GP. And I don't think there could be a GP without, you know, it's like These are the key ingredients”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  41. “Well, the idea, and it was both JP and I really just written down, is that we were comfortable being purveyors. And we wanted purvey to the very best of the best of the best. We had a deep, deep belief that there would be this restaurant renaissance in America. There was going to be this huge inflow of French and Italian high-level cuisine, and that the coffee in America wasn't going to accommodate it. Coffee in America was just dedicated to fast-to-go business, Starbucks style, that they weren't bringing it. And we were that company. We wanted to be those people, and we would work directly with the farms. We would work directly with the chefs, that we would bring coffee to a whole new level, that it's not just like salt and pepper on the table, but we give it a name, a place, an identity.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  42. “Well, right away, it was pretty simple. I took a train into Monte Carlo and I interviewed and got jobs. I mean, accounting jobs right away because most of them were like shipping companies and a lot of companies that are there to avoid tax. So they're not really part of the culture. And so, you know, the operating language is English. And I did a lot of odd jobs, that's for sure. Consulting, tax work, accounting, no job too big, too small kind of thing. Yeah. I found a little boat. I reconditioned it and I lived on it. So basically I always kind of embraced the idea that, you know, you could save money by living in poverty. So don't change that, right?”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  43. “Yeah, I had a lot of confidence in my skill set. I had a lot of confidence in myself. It's not that. It's just that I needed to go and find a place that I could fit. I knew I needed to put together $95,000 so I could start this coffee company with my best friend.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  44. “Well, I mean, the why is multifaceted. You know, part of it was it was becoming clear to me that I have a furnace in my brain, right? So that I inherited certain traits from my parents. And that sort of environment wasn't safe for me.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  45. “No. So I graduated. I'd applied for and got into the business school. And so then I got a job as a tax consultant for a company called Ernst Winnie at the time. It was one of the big eight accounting firms. I was wearing a suit. I had a leather lunchbox and everything.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  46. “Yeah, it was that's how it finished, how it started with ideas. Like, why don't we go directly to the farm? That's what your father did. And I know as working from a farm that if you take the time to come to our farm, you would get the best stuff. So we would talk about this whole concept that later on became coffee sourcing or farm to table. And then later on, we just made it.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  47. “Yeah, and then from there, we would eat and we would play cards. We would drink whiskey sometimes, remember JP? Or like really cheap wine? And then we began dreaming.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  48. “I'm standing at the bar solo, and this guy walks in. He's got a gold, like, looks, I think it's silk vest over a white puffy sleeve shirt. And it's this French guy. And he actually reaches over the bar and says, may I have a champagne? Yeah, I have a stove, and he goes, Can I use it? And I'm still, I have very little money. And I go, no, you could use it anytime as long as you cook for two. I thought I could get some free food out of this. And that's how we met. And literally Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, every week for the next three years, he cooked dinner at my house.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  49. “Oh my god. Yeah. Umberto was a very famous roaster in Italy, Numbria, before he even started roasting in Seattle. So he came in with like top shelf knowledge that no one really had access to. And so there was this rumor, this French guy is around. And there's this new sound that was happening at the time, right? That they called was called Grunge, right? And there was a band called Green River that later would become Pearl Jam, r So there was this little venue called Oxford, and they put up the stage and this band called Green River was going to come on. And so you can imagine the crowd. And they didn't serve like beer in a glass. They served rainier beer in a can.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  50. “And to be a barista by then and to be in coffee was like being like a DJ, you know, you were known. And so TI was like, I have to say at that time the best coffee roasting company in the United States of America, hands down.”

    2026-01-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · La Colombe Coffee Roasters: Todd Carmichael and J.P. Iberti. A Brotherhood Built on Coffee (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT