James Hoffmann shares 3 rules for life
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You get to decide the story. Like it's totally, it's a blank slate. So what people have told you, who you are, what you are, what you're capable of, ignore all that because they don't know and you can choose something else. It's just a choice.

Hey there, I'm Matt D'Avella and welcome to my short form podcast, Three Rules. Each episode, I ask a guest to share three rules that help them find success and happiness. Today, I'm joined by James Hoffman, world barista champion, author, entrepreneur, and widely considered the godfather of coffee YouTube.

Through his videos, businesses and best selling book, The World Atlas of Coffee, James has helped millions of people understand coffee on a deeper level and probably spend a little bit more money on coffee gear than they planned. Speaking for myself, I'm really excited to get into your rules and learn a little bit about how you've been able to navigate this trajectory of success and happiness as a creator.

So let's jump right into it. What's rule number one? So I'm going to do a little bit of business and then I'll do a little bit of kind of personal stuff. I will say from the beginning, I was excited to do this, but also terrified because I feel like I'm not the person to give rules for living, I guess. But I'll try and share some things that have been useful for me. The first one, fear and leverage stories. And not in a narrative filmmaking kind of stories way, but the internal monologue stories. I realize this is a thing I think about quite a lot.

And I think about them, and I have this weird relationship with them where I think they're good and I think they're terrible. And so I sort of fear them in some ways and I value them deeply in other ways. I should probably explain the two ways that these happen. Humans tell stories about other humans all the time, right? We do it very quickly. We get a picture of who someone is and we like to just reaffirm that story over and over and over again, right? So

Inevitably, I've seen a bunch of your videos, I have a story about who you are. It's not a coherent story, but it's formed enough that I will begin to just reinforce that if I choose to. It's very easy, it's very human, it's very natural. It's also, I think, reasonably unproductive to do so and takes you away from empathy. Because you'll have a conversation with someone and a big part of your brain is just looking to reinforce what I already think. Particularly with people you don't like, if I'm honest. That's the one where it's easiest to do.

I can't stop you doing it, but I think it's what's always been helpful for me is to be questioning that and be like, are you just telling yourself a story? Are you just looking to confirm that? Are you looking for behaviors that confirm the stories that you tell yourself? So that's the part of stories that I fear the most. On the other side of things...

The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, I think, are so easy to leverage into doing stuff, right? I will quite quickly reframe who I see myself to be, to be in line with this thing that I'm trying to do. The classic of this and the other way around is the whole quit smoking by seeing yourself as someone who doesn't smoke anymore, as seeing yourself as a non-smoker. If you see yourself as a smoker who's currently quitting...

you will relapse. But once your story changes to, oh, I don't smoke, the behaviors get much easier. This is probably one of the most repeated and corny quotes that I love and that helped me a lot when I was starting out.

I think people attribute it to Henry Ford. I don't know who actually said it, but it's the quote, whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you are absolutely right. And as like a 16 year old kid, that was one of those things that stuck with me and just kind of reaffirmed the idea that

your belief system, your thoughts, the stories that you tell yourself make a huge difference on what you're able to do. - It's a weird little superpower, little hack in the human machine that if you kind of tell yourself it's true, it kind of becomes true. And I think that's amazing.

Are there any particular stories that you've been telling yourself lately about yourself that help you? I mean, no. Like for me, exercise is probably the easiest one. Like I get up at five something in the morning and I go and exercise and that's miserable. And why do I choose to do that at that time? How do I get myself out of bed every morning?

I just have no trouble. Thankfully now I've just been like, this is who I am and this is what I do. I'm someone who gets up early and goes and works out every day. It's why I think kind of cosplay as an athlete is really important. I quite like dressing up in the things to do the exercise because it reinforces the story in a fun sort of way that I'm serious about these things, that this is what I do. So I like it.

the nice running clothes or, you know, ridiculous bib shorts that feel ridiculous to own. But it's a kind of commitment to the bit, I guess. You know, I like to cosplay as an athlete and it helps.

motivate me to do the exercise. If you were to go back in time and talk to young James, what kind of stories would you encourage him to avoid? Maybe what are those stories that he should have been more afraid of? And what stories might you encourage him to embrace? I think in terms of stuff to embrace, it would have been ultimately...

You get to decide the story. Like it's totally, it's a blank slate. You can decide anything. So what people have told you, who you are, what you are, what you're capable of, ignore all that because they don't know. And you can choose something else. It's just a choice of how you think about yourself. Let's move to rule number two. Rule number two, everybody leaves. I had a coffee roasting business. I still do. And we'd supply loads of cafes and you'd be like, okay, what are you doing for like,

Drink quality and they're like, oh we found someone who's really knowledgeable. They're gonna be like the head barista So our drinks are sorted and I'm like they're gonna stay for six months maybe and then they're gonna go What happens then to the the quality of the drinks that your coffee shop serves? Poof falls off a cliff right you can't have systems entirely reliant on people and

And so you have to have a mindset of everyone's going to leave. Hopefully they'll go to something better, right? They'll leave and find a better job at some point or, you know, they'll sell the business or whatever it's going to be. You can leave in a good way or you can be fired or die, but you're going to leave. Everyone will leave a business at some point.

How do you build systems and structure that capture knowledge outside of people? Because if you just pour the knowledge solely into people, they're leaky buckets. And that just flows right out the bottom at some point. And it goes and you lose it. How do you retain it inside, which helps people do their job better anyway, but also gives the business more longevity. And it's just if you're going to go into a project,

Think about systemic knowledge in the project. If it requires more than one person, think about how you retain the knowledge inside the thing. If you can do that, life is like a hundred times easier and everything is way more sustainable. Have you found any specific systems in terms of how you've grown your businesses that have helped you to accomplish that?

I mean, at the very basic level, it's kind of write it down. Like if there's a process that exists, it cannot exist solely in someone's head. If there's a protocol, if there's a quality control step that exists, it has to exist outside of human. And that's annoying. But that's why it doesn't happen. It's annoying to do. It's not particularly fun to write down how we taste coffee in the morning in our coffee shop when we're opening up to make sure it's good. You don't want to have to do that. You just want to be like, taste the coffee, make sure it's good.

Done. But the more time you invest in that early, it pays dividends down the line. Whatever it is you're doing, whether it's like editing video at the same time, like what actually makes your edits your edits?

Can you codify that? Can you write it down? Because if you're going to hire an editor, either freelance or permanently, you'll massively decrease your pain point if you know exactly what it is you're going to ask them to do. And when they leave, because people leave, you won't have a painful transition on the other side of it too. You know, it should be a living document.

But this is kind of it. Like you just need to think about this stuff existing outside of people's brains. I suppose it could even be, you know, especially with what we're talking about now, like filmmaking, editing, YouTube. These could be tutorials. They could be videos. They could be walkthroughs of you showing exactly how you set up your project timeline. So then that way, like you said, you don't have as much of a hard time onboarding somebody else into your system. Or

Or just even if it's just for a day, you know what I mean? Like letting them go further faster and do what they're good at and not spend time doing stuff that, you know, shouldn't be thought about anymore. It's just better value for money. I imagine, and I know this from personal experience in hiring people, it's very hard to find talent, find good people, even if they want to stick around for six months, a year or more.

So how do you, how have you gone about finding the right people to fit into these systems? Attracting talent. I think vision has always been a key part of stuff for me, like a purpose, a meaningful sort of goal or journey. You know, what we, what we do here, for example, is not just let's make loads of YouTube videos that get, you know, lots of views. It's what we're trying to

change the way people think about coffee and try and create some longevity to it as a culture in the face of increasing pricing by having people enjoy it more. But that kind of informs a lot of our decisions and people like to be part of that when we see the results of that. That's very satisfying. I suppose that

kind of embodying that rule, everybody leaves helps you to future proof your business. And it also helps you to be a better boss. You know, like you said, everybody's going to leave. So you can expect that you can know that people are going to move on and you hope that they will move on to bigger and better things. And in a way, it helps you become less kind of defensive as trying to

Hold on to people as long as you possibly can when it may not be to their benefit. I think a lot of people start businesses and end up falling into the model of, we are a family, right? And that is a giant red flag because every single family is dysfunctional. Everyone. They're all. There's no functional family. Every family has its dysfunction. And I don't think you want to bring that dynamic into the workplace because everything becomes very emotional. Everything very quickly...

messy and unpleasant. And I certainly fell into that early on. It was a small team doing this thing and we felt like a family.

Very bad. And so, you know, when people leave a family, that's heartbreaking. You know what I mean? And people, you can take that really badly and you can feel really bad leaving a family like that. You shouldn't feel that way. You know, it shouldn't be like that. There should be no emotional blackmail going on anywhere in the workplace. So that dynamic, yeah, is a bad one. And so thinking about how and when will you leave? Will you, you know, where will you go? I love to see people progress through life.

businesses that I work within. Like it makes me happy to see people take a step forwards and up and some roles, it's hard to have a progress in the company. You might be just waiting for someone else to leave or to die and that's it. There's no more progression in that sort of pathway. And so you have to leave to progress. I think that's good. I think that's great if people leave and move forwards in their careers and journeys.

There's no resentment there. And again, it shouldn't break my business when they do leave because while their great talent is very important,

There should be enough structure there to bring someone else in to help them get them up to speed without everything falling to pieces. I'm going to be back with the third and final rule in a moment. But first, one of the ways I'm supporting this podcast is through Patreon. By becoming a patron, you get access to the full unedited episodes of the show. Yeah, right now, I spend a lot of my time making videos, teaching people about coffee, trying to encourage them to enjoy it more. It's about delight and value.

more than it is about obsessing or trying to get you to spend more money. It's just about pleasure, I suppose, and that kind of side of coffee. I think it's enjoyable to me. As a patron, you'll also get additional unused footage from my YouTube videos and access to a members-only area where you can ask me questions for my Patreon-exclusive AMA podcast.

And most importantly, you'll feel good knowing that you're supporting a creator you like. And really, what other incentive do you need? Simply go to patreon.com slash Matt D'Avella to support the show. That's patreon.com slash Matt D'Avella. There's a link down in the description below. Thanks for considering. Alrighty, let's move on to rule number three. Rule three, obsess about privacy. Yeah, this is a funny one. And I'm slightly self-conscious talking to you about this because you're quite open about who you are in your life and those kinds of things. So

There's no judgment in this one. For me, you know, I think it's, in part, this is tied to doing stuff on the internet in terms of there's a lot about me that I have chosen not to put on the internet. And that's a separate piece, right? I think we massively undervalue privacy. We don't know what we've got till it's gone kind of thing. I think it's very easy to surrender huge amounts of who we are to the internet in exchange for

I suppose validation, but I am, this is a really weird thing to say, even if it's true. I'm probably the most externally validated person I know. And so for me, when I prioritize my private-ness, keep a lot of my life away from external validation, the benefit is it changes my motivations for a lot of what I do.

Because it's not in exchange for external validation, it's in exchange for something else. Like, why am I doing this thing? I know that there's the existing rule of like, you know, would you still do it if you couldn't tell anyone about it? And I suppose this is that with the added twist of, I think privacy is really important and really valuable and should be

treasured, I think. - I'm so glad that you brought this up 'cause this is something that Nat and I have talked about a lot and it's something that is constantly evolving in our life, especially as our son grows up. As a filmmaker, I wanna in many ways document my life, talk about my challenges and struggles to help other people. But I think you're so right that like you have to start to question what is the motivation? Like why do we need to share

these things and why do we need to be as open as we are? Because I think people often take it for granted and they immediately are brought into this world where everything is shared online. And that can leave you vulnerable in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think it's one where it really works for me. It's a thing I think about a lot and I see real value in. And I do like

having external validation taken away from me in some ways to change the decisions I make. I think it's been a really nice upside in a funny sort of way of trying to be a bit more private is that I've had to think about why am I doing what I'm doing? And that's a good thing. So can you go into that a little bit more? So you're saying that because you don't share everything, you have to be a little bit more

I guess, intentional with the things that you do create and you do choose to share? I think it's not even that in a fun way. It's like so many people take a silly thing like exercise, right? Like running a 5K, a 10K, something like that, right? To do that, we've pretty much normalized, hey, I did this thing. I did well. I didn't go well. This is why I've done this thing. And this moment of like, I did it and now I can tell people about it

has existed for a long time and it's predated the internet for a long time too but but it's kind of exacerbated by that now you're like okay you're going to invest a huge amount of time and effort in maybe learning to do something what if you can never tell anyone about it on the other end of it would you still do it and i think that's a really interesting conversation like why am i what is my motivation actually for doing this thing i can never tell a soul about it really well

Under these kind of rules, I can tell a couple of people, maybe, but that's kind of it. I have to do this solely for me. And that's a very nice model for choosing why to do things, I think. And it's very easy to have the, oh, but when I run the marathon, I can tell people I ran the marathon. And that's satisfying. It is. It's nice to tell people you did a cool thing. It is.

But I think it's interesting to take it away and see how it changes how you think about stuff. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. If people want to learn more about your work, where should we send them? Just search for me, James Hoffman, or I think people keep telling me you can just search British coffee guy in the search bar of YouTube and you'll get to me too, which is nice. But yeah, I think YouTube is a pretty good place to start. Awesome. Thanks so much.

Thanks for tuning in to Three Rules. Want to see every rule from the show? Get the full archive at mattdavella.com slash three rules. For my weekly bite-sized self-development emails where I share insightful lessons, practical tips, and personal experiments, sign up at mattdavella.com slash newsletter. And if you want to learn more about today's guest, check out the description for this episode. See you next time.