Episode 55: Roasting Coffee As A Way To Care For Yourself And Others W/ JB Anderson

My guest on today’s podcast is JB Anderson. JB is the founder of Taxus Street Coffee, a local coffee shop and roastery located in Chesapeake Virginia. In this episode JB shares his story of entrepreneurship. Straight out of high school he started working as a personal trainer. After moving to Chesapeake Virginia to start a job with a ministry called Young Life, JB lived with some guys who taught him that “not all coffee is made the same”. It was there that he fell in love with coffee and decided to purchase a coffee roaster and teach himself how to roast coffee out of his garage. JB uses his coffee shop as a platform to care for high school kids in his area- including some who don’t have stable housing situations. In this episode we talk in depth about the power of being able to speak into someone’s life and believe in them. From people who did that in our lives, to how as a leader you can do that in your own spheres. And be sure to listen to the end as JB shares his definition of success, as being humble enough to ask for forgiveness. So with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Self-Employment Success Podcast with JB Anderson.

Transcript:

All right, welcome JB to the Self -Employment Success podcast. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you. Of course. Good time. Sorry I'm late. Hey, shout out to Leland. He's full of grace and mercy because I was late for this. Life happens. You were putting out real fires. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's jump in. Tell us about yourself personally and professionally, what you do, your business, family, all that. JB Anderson, I work for Young Life in Chesapeake.

I've worked for Young Life for the last 10 years. Before that, I was a personal trainer in Fredericksburg. I had my own little kind of personal training business at a gym where you're responsible for procuring clients and the success or lack thereof. If you don't, you basically just get fired. So.

So my business sort of acumen sort of started there where it was like, well, it's kind of sink or swim if you're going to do like a small, you know, entrepreneur, be as entrepreneur and be a personal trainer and not super hard, but not super easy. I loved, loved fitness, got into it. That was kind of part of my faith journey too. It was kind of like, met the Lord, got fit. Like they went hand in hand. It was like, get spiritually fit, take this thing.

Serious and then get physically fit at the same time don't be you know in those spaces and then I led Young Life During that time went on to work for Young Life. I lived moved to Chesapeake ten years ago to work for Young Life at Oscar Smith High School and During that time Fell in love with coffee had some roommates that were involved with coffee a Couple of other things, you know, like later on down the road brought me to coffee and

realized nobody was doing it in Chesapeake. Or really, there really wasn't anyone doing it locally. Like there were very few coffee roasters, like craft coffee roasters, small coffee roasters, in Hampton Roads for the most part. There were not a lot. And so I was like, okay, that's a niche that can be filled. I like this thing. We can hire some high schoolers. Just found out there's a group of homeless kids, like 200 kids that are going to high school that I was leading at.

were homeless. So I was like, okay, well, what's another way to help them? I fully believe that sharing the gospel with them is the best thing you could possibly do. And while simultaneously saying, let's get you a job, let's figure out how to affect all areas of your life. And then the coffee company sort of arose out of that. And...

That's kind of like where we're at today. My wife moved here. She did the same internship you did the year before and then moved down a year after I did, lived with this family that went to the church that I went to. For six months we got married, 2015. And then got two girls right now, twin girls, have a little boy on the way.

And yeah, I think that catches everybody up pretty quick. Yeah, it's a good summary. In the last 10 years. So you...

are in high school and when did the personal training start? Like. Right, so like right

like a year, maybe like freshman year of college. I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't like, I don't, I just don't like this model of learning. I don't like this model towards garnering success. So I am going to figure out something else, you know? So I went, I became a server at Red Lobster, easy cash business. And I liked those hours and I liked,