Listen to the interview here!
Adam Kenderdine
Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Adam Kenderdine with me. Hi, Adam.
Adam Kenderdine: Hi, how are you?
Toni: I’m great. Adam, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Adam: I’m the owner/operator of Benchwarmers Coffee. It was a company that I started about two years ago. I roast and brew my own coffee. Everything is from farm to cup. I deal with direct trade, fair trade and organic coffees. No artificial flavoring whatsoever. How the farmer grew it is how I roast it just to bring out the best flavors, so that we just have a unique connection between the farmer and the cup.
Toni: You hear about all the farm to table initiatives, and you never think about coffee. I love that. Thank you for being part of the Project today. Let’s go into the first question of the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Adam: I think it’s just a feeling that you get that motivates you to do something better than what you’re currently doing. It gets you out of the current station you are in life, and maybe betters you. I think inspiration is a positive. It’s going to better you in the long run to do more, be more, help someone.
Toni: How do you take that definition from your perspective of being inspired and put that into practice today in Berks County?
Adam: A lot of my customers and a lot of my friends and family do inspire me on a daily basis with what they just do in general – dealing with difficult tasks, and just working through them and seeing a positive reaction to my coffee with the customers that I do have. A lot of people ask me about business and how I did things, what they need to do to start their own businesses. It’s more or less like paying it forward. I still am working to get my business going, but I’m also able to help someone who still has an idea on their piece of paper. That kind of thing I think works pretty locally here.
Toni: The way that you put it into practice is that not only have you been inspired to start this business, but people see what you’re doing and now they’re coming to you and saying, “Oh my goodness – how did you do that?” You’re able to talk to them about, “Yes, it was an ‘oh my goodness, what am I doing’ but here’s what I’m doing.”
Adam: This is what I figured out how to do. No one really showed me how to do anything. Some of the businesspeople that I do know – not to take it away from some of the great businesses around here – but no one really wants to share their secrets. Their trade secrets, they keep them close to the vest. You know the basic stuff of starting a business, just registering a business, something simple that you can do on a website – it took me a while to figure out how to do that, but now I know how to do it. You have to go get these permits, or you have to do this or you have to do that next. There’s no rule guide and a step-to-step procedure on how to do anything like this.
Toni: You said that inspiration means to you a feeling – a feeling to do something more than you’re
doing today. Did you just wake up one day and say, “I’m inspired today to start a coffee business”?
Adam: For the most part, yes. I just woke up. It was kind of an idea that was rolling around in the back of my head and it just kept eating away at me and eating away at me, and the more I thought about it, the more it came to light. It snowballed. I just started goofing around with different types of coffee, and all of a sudden I had something. Each small step and each small success was just an inspiration to keep moving forward with it.
With inspiration comes motivation and determination. You can be inspired to do something, but if you don’t have the motivation and the determination behind it, it’s not going to come to light.
Toni: There was the key. I heard it when you said it just a bit ago, too, that you woke up, and in a sense that’s what you felt, and you let it germinate for a bit, but then you took action.
Adam: Yes.
Toni: Motivation and determination, I think there might be a third one too – maybe resilience, because you’re constantly having to start over, right?
Adam: That’s true, yes. There were a lot of times where I tripped and fell and just to get back up and keep moving forward, you’re going to have people that are going to tell you that you can't do it. You’re going to have people that tell you that it’s a bad idea, or they’re just going to try and knock you down, because they might think it’s a silly idea or that kind of thing. Just take that kind of stuff with a grain of salt and just keep moving forward with it. You have to be determined if you want to make it succeed.
Toni: You know, Adam, you just raised a point. I’m wondering, briefly, how would you describe to somebody that’s listening to you right now that may be inspired to do something on their own like you have – and I know you’re still working a full-time job, so you’re growing this on the side as well – what would you tell that person that is also being told, “Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it,” and they’re getting beat down? What did it take for you to keep doing it?
Adam: It wasn’t about what other people wanted to do – it was about what I want to do. The people that are going to knock you down, don’t listen to them. They’re not your friends. Those people aren’t going to help you. Listen to the people that are going to be behind you and support you. Take all that negativity and put it away.
Toni: I love that.
Adam: Remember that it’s there, because it’s going to keep you humble, but just get rid of it. You don’t need it.
Toni: Great advice. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Adam: A lot of people. Like I said before, friends, family – anyone that just has a difficult situation and just overcomes it. I’m not really inspired by rich, famous people. More or less, I’m inspired by the average person. I have friends who just graduated from school. They’re starting their own career path. They just got hired full time. But, there are single parents who have been working full time, going to school full time, and being a full-time parent, and now they’re succeeding because they kept going. They didn’t give up. That’s inspiring. That’s more on the plate than I have just working full time and running my own small business. They’re doing it not just to better themselves, but to provide for someone else. That’s just completely … I’m blown away by that, because they could have given up at any point.
Toni: I love that you’re inspired by people that do that and not by people that have deep pockets, necessarily.
Adam: Rich, famous people, actors – they may do great things, but they have the funds and the ability to do it, and it’s their job to do it, more or less. That’s why they are where they are. Many people do great things, but I think you have to look at it on an even plane of where you’re at and give back. That’s inspiring.
Toni: It is inspiring.
Adam: They’ve never asked for anything. They just keep moving forward.
Toni: Fantastic. So what do you want your legacy to be?
Adam: I don’t know. Something good, I hope. A hard worker. Someone who is honest. Someone who is decent. Maybe they can say I made some good coffee, but just an honest, nice guy.
Toni: That would be a phenomenal legacy. That’s our living legacy, isn’t it?
Adam: Yes.
Toni: People get tripped up by that question, but it’s really your living legacy too, and what you’re doing today. I wish you the best success in your coffee business, and thank you so much for sharing on the Get Inspired! Project today.
Adam: Thank you.
