Profile of a Business Owner: Kevin Conard

Bio: I was born and raised in Topeka by loving, entrepreneurial parents. Before I could walk, I was already watching a young family business in motion. My parents owned Coffee USA Corp., established in 1969, and became Topeka’s first local coffee roastery, before coffee was even cool or hipster. At the age of 12, once I was old enough to do more than count bags of coffee and sweep the floors, I roasted my first batch of coffee. By 17, I upgraded from my red wagon coffee route around the neighborhood and began business to business sales for the office coffee service during summers. After a bachelor’s degree in business administration, I returned to the family business to focus on growing and expanding the office coffee division. In 2002, my wife Amy and I purchased the company allowing my parents to retire. This transition eventually included a rebranding of the business to become what it is today, Blue Jazz Coffee Roasters. We have transitioned from a traditional office coffee service company to also include the ability to closely partner with and roast for coffee shops and restaurants. To deepen our abilities and partnership commitments, we are also expanding this year into barista raining with a new 2000 square foot training lab to be completed mid-year.
I am a husband to Amy, and a father to Sofie (17) and Brady (15).

TK: What 3 things would you have with you if stranded on an island?

If I were stranded on an Island, I’d be sure to include my ready to go survival pack of course, a guitar and a solar powered Synesso Hydra MVP Espresso Machine for morning seaweed lattes.

TK: How many businesses have you started/do you currently have?

Two. Blue Jazz Coffee Roasters, and jaKD, LLP, a real estate holding company my friend Dustin Leonard and I work on in our spare time.

TK: What is the biggest risk you have ever taken?

The biggest risk we have ever taken was buying out the family business in October of 2002 when Amy and I had been married for 2 years and had just been blessed with a newborn Sofie that April. I had to sell my beloved pickup truck and start driving the delivery van as my personal vehicle and leveraged everything we had to make that transaction happen. I figured it would be at least 3 months before we could take our first paycheck home.  We survived.

TK: How do you encourage creativity in your business?

I’ll be honest this isn’t something I’ve been great at for most of my career.  I’ve personally been creative how I’ve gone about transforming my parent’s company to feel and look like more of a reflection of me, but I hadn’t asked that much from our team until recently.  A few years ago, we flipped a mental switch and decided that we want to be leaders in our industry.  We want to be known as problem solvers and innovators.  It didn’t take long before we developed, as a team, the Blue Jazz Cold Pour system that makes Cold Brew Coffee easy for everyone. What used to be an overnight process, we are now doing in 30 minutes.  After a year of selling systems to the market, both commercial and residential, our satisfaction rate is 100%. 

Consequently, once your organization gets a taste of success like that in innovation and creativity, it becomes very easy to keep that momentum going.  We asked again, “what are some of the other problems our customers face every day, and how can we help them?”  This is what led to the barista training lab and Platinum Partnership we now offer. Two of our coffee shop customers largest headaches are keeping their staff trained with a growing coffee knowledge and purchasing and maintaining very expensive coffee equipment required to be excellent at their craft.  We now absorb those burdens for our closest partners, and we don’t mind at all. Those happen to be two areas we are naturally gifted, so everybody wins.

Moral of the story in our case study is to focus in on your customer’s needs/challenges and then encourage your team to be creative and innovate a solution. Don’t squash ideas too quickly or harshly.  I almost dismissed the idea that became Cold Pour.  Finally, just go for it, and don’t be afraid to fail. My buddy Dustin tells me to “lean into the fear.”

TK: What has been your greatest success?

Among small business owners, I hear a lot about the difficulty of hiring and retaining quality employees.  Somehow, by the grace of God, we’ve been able to hire very well.  Granted, there are only 4 of us, but I can’t imagine a better person for any position that we have filled.  We all have to be versatile, hustle to cover a lot of bases, be able to work independently and as a team.  To top it all off our entire team is of very high moral fiber, which is the number 1 criteria as far as I am concerned in hiring.  I don’t know that I can claim this as MY greatest success, but it is something we are fortunate to have at Blue Jazz.

TK:What is the best book you read this year?

Right Away and All at Once, by Greg Brenneman:  Five Steps to Transform Your Business and Enrich Your Life

Greg does a fantastic job weaving together two things I’m passionate about, which are creating a healthy and rich family life while maintaining a productive, rewarding work life as well.  In addition to the 5 steps to transform or turn around a business, my biggest personal takeaway from the book is Greg’s list of 5Fs in order:  Faith, Family, Friends, Fitness, Finances. This is the foundation for every mentoring session my son and I have.  It’s amazing how much conversation can happen just from walking through that list and how it applies to our week. Seems like if you tend to that list and keep it in the right order, everything else just falls in to place.