07/30/14 – Darrin Marion – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, Scott Horton Show.
Oh, man, that's good.
All right, joining me on the phone is Darren Marion, the founder and operator of Darren's Coffee Company.
That's Darren'sCoffee.com.
Two R's in Darren's.
I tried it with one R. It didn't work.
Anyway, welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Darren?
I'm doing real good, man.
I'm real good.
Good, good.
Happy to have you here.
You got to double-check your URL forwarding there, man.
We got to get all different spellings of Darren's to work there.
All right, so the deal is, I'm a Folgers guy, man, because I'm a bum, you know.
I got to drink coffee, but it ain't any good.
Sometimes McDonald's, you know, if the wife goes and gets McDonald's.
Anyway, but then you sent me these bags of coffee.
I went out and bought a grinder because I lost mine somewhere in a move at one point.
So I'm drinking the house blend now.
I have not yet gotten to the Iron Roast and the Ethiopia.
But I am sitting here smelling the bags of the Iron Roast and Ethiopia now, and they smell really, really good.
So tell me, Darren, about how you got in the coffee business.
I hated what I did for a living.
And I wanted to do something completely different, man.
So I always thought about kind of what made people smile.
I wanted to do something that made people smile.
And when I look back to what a happy time in my life it would be every Saturday morning when my grandfather would have everybody over.
And he'd make everybody coffee, bacon, eggs, toast.
And us kids would have our sugar and milk and a little bit of coffee taste.
So I figured no matter what, if people even if they don't like to taste the coffee, they usually like to smell the coffee.
They have some kind of fond memory around it.
That's what got me into it.
That's good, man.
And how long ago was that?
And how's business going?
Man, it was back in 2010.
I went out and I was working for Starbucks.
I was a coffee master.
And I wanted to taste everything and I was part of the process of knowing what coffee tasted like.
And I usually noticed that it started to all taste the same and I wanted to see if I could do it myself.
So I went out and took a cast iron skillet and a whisk and sent my wife out of the house.
Came back out.
It was smoky.
But we came back in and she tasted it and was like, what is this?
And I was like, it's fresh.
This is freshly roasted coffee and it tasted like a wild fruit punch.
Then I started to taste it, take it into work and have people taste it.
Eventually a guy gave me some money for it and then I went out and got some bootleg cards.
You know, just basic Mr. Print cards, you know, and was like, hey, this is my, this is Darren's coffee.
So it was back in 2010.
That's cool, man.
It sounds like some fake American dream story only in real life, huh?
Yeah, there you go, man.
Got it.
That's cool.
And so, and now you're out of Indiana.
Where in Indiana again?
Just north of Indianapolis in Dynesville, Indiana.
So it actually was rated the place of lowest crime in the state of Indiana.
Well, hey man, so listen, I gotta tell you that first of all, I really like the coffee.
I really do.
I'm not just saying that because you're bribing me to say that.
It's really great and I really appreciate you sending me at least a sample.
I hope I can get on the flow, you know, like a skateboard or Sponsordam or something, you know.
Yeah, get some more coffee to drink around here.
But thank you very much for the coffee.
Thank you very much for supporting the show.
And I do hope that this will, you know, help nudge those sales up a little bit more and get people involved in it.
And now, and there's a deal, right?
If they're fans of the show and they use promo code Scott, then what?
It's free shipping.
Free shipping.
How much is shipping on a couple of bags of coffee anyway?
Normally, I would charge a flat rate of $6.25.
Yeah, that's good.
So the deal before was save $2 and you're telling me that basically minimum the shipping was $6 anyway for just a bag?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
I was like, you know, let's see what we can do to make something a little more fair.
Yeah, yeah.
That's way better than the $2 off that we're offering.
I got to recut a new commercial for you there.
Sorry.
Cool, man.
But yeah, man.
So that's really cool.
First of all, I'm really glad for the fact that you're so successful at this.
I like hearing just stories like that of people figuring out what they want to do and how to do it, you know, and actually getting the work done.
I sort of feel like that's what I'm missing around here.
But anyway, but yeah, that's great.
And I do hope that people just go to my website, ScottHorton.org.
Of course, you'll find the logo for Darren's Coffee right there on the right-hand side of the page.
And now what all different kinds of coffee you got?
A bunch?
You got about a minute and a half still to talk?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I got like four or five different blends.
All in all, I carry 42 different coffees, but I don't keep them all listed on my site because that kind of overwhelms people and for some odd reason they don't like choice.
So I limit, I kind of limit to my blends out there and my blends that are really, really good.
I deal only in specialty grade coffee, which is top 2% of coffee in the world.
So it's all literally graded excellent by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
Cool.
I didn't even know there was one, but I guess I'm not surprised.
There you go, man.
Well, you know, I admit I'm not some yuppie and I'm not saying you are, but I'm just saying I don't have a background in being judgmental about different coffee flavors other than I really don't like that French roasty stuff.
I don't like no cream in my coffee, you know, just a little sugar kind of thing, but uh, yeah, I don't like nothing in terms of like wild flavored with berries and whatever crap like somebody's mom drinks, but as far as, you know, different kinds of black coffee, I don't really know, but I do know I like this a whole lot better than the Folgers I've been drinking out of a can.
I'll tell you that.
I'm sure you do.
It's great.
And look, I mean with the free shipping everything it all works out, right?
So yeah, yeah Yeah, this is uh, this is a smart way for people to get coffee.
You know, you ought to do too You got to sell it on amazon.com Yeah, working on that now, man.
Yeah, there you go And then people can buy Darren's coffee and amazon.com Through scotthorton.org all at the same time and everybody gets a kickback and we're all rich and keep doing shows And waking up in the morning.
I mean, honestly, I'm just no good in the morning at all without coffee.
I need it It's not just a matter of taste.
Although it's that too I'm like one of them alcoholics only for coffee Darren I'm relying on you to keep me caffeinated.
Well, that's the job, man That can most trade a commodity in the world.
Yep Uh, yeah, uh, well pretty close.
Anyway, I guess we'll see once they get uh to more legalize the weed here, but Yeah, all right Well, thanks.
Thanks for coming on the show Uh, thanks for tolerating me Uh, you know rambling on as I do and uh, and thanks for supporting the show and thanks for brewing such great coffee Darren Appreciate it.
All right.
All right.
Y'all that's Darren Marion.
He's at Darren's coffee.com Two r's although i'm sure he's gonna fix the redirect there real fast Two r's but uh, Darren's coffee dot com for Darren's coffee company