It's not what you do, it's how you do it. (introducing the Chainergy Coffee Company, again)

Introducing the Chainergy coffee company

What is the Chainergy coffee company?

It’s a bankrupt business.

No it’s not bankrupt , it’s dormant.

No it is not really even dormant, it just does not sell coffee, for now.

Chainergy was an idea I developed while waiting for a cab, on a freezing morning of January about 5 years ago, in the suburbs of Helsinki.

I was in one of those “what the hell am I doing” moment. I was bound to go on an audit mission in South America, it was freezing cold and my life seemed to go in the completely wrong direction.

So while I was waiting for the cab, in the freezing cold, my brain started to rummage around its recesses and I started to think. The thought process went more or less as follows:

“It’s cold. It’s damn cold.

This coffee is absolutely disgusting. But it’s warm. Finland has an awful coffee. But it’s warm. Isn’t it that Finland has the highest coffee consumption in the world?

I don’t want to travel anymore. No, I want to travel, but not for work. Or at least it has not be for someone else.

I will open a company. I will teach this region of the world to drink proper coffee.

Blockchain seems to be all the rage. I don’t understand it. I shall study it. How can a contract be smart? Well I know paper contracts that are smarter than some people, but the problem is those people, not the contracts. So how can a contract be smart?

I will start a blog. Energy chain. No sucks. Block Energy. No. Chainergy. Oh, this I like. Let me check if the domain is available. It is”.

If it does not look like a very structured strategic approach to personal branding and communication, or a structured approach for a business idea, it is because it was not. It was cold and I was trying to stay awake while the bloody cab was taking ages to come. In Finland, in a pitch black January morning.

So I registered the domain and designed the little logo, not very original, but I like it, that you see on chainergy.net. .net because .com was already taken and I liked the idea of a network domain.

Nodes of a network, connected by a chain. Seemed clever at the time, few days later, I thought it was actually not very original, but I had paid to register so it would have to do.

Initially I thought I would start a blog. On Blockchain in Commodity. Find a niche, they said. Now this was 2017. As a niche it was the nichest niche I could find. Too much of a niche, in fact. I wrote 3 articles on linkedin talking about blockchain in commodity, that, at the time, could be summarized in “not much” “lot of talk” and “no, nothing really”.

The reactions, 3 , that I had, were promising, but did not exactly look like a blog that I could grow above the low double digit figures. It’s true that I write because I like it, not because I plan to make any money out of it. But hell a bit of reward for the effort…

So I settled for a wider “commodity trading” and “debunking the BS of commodity trading” which is what it is now.

At the end of the day in a fit of (rare at the time, due to a complete messed up family situation) enthusiasm I registered the domain and subscribed to a premium plan on WordPress.com (mistake, big mistake. I learnt later WordPress.org is the way to go. Or so they say).So I had to do something out of it. I started to publish a few articles, always cross-posting between linkedin and my blog. Results were similar, as in my previous post: no one seemed to care. Actually even funnier: the more effort in the article I put, the least interest it would generate.

So it dawned on me. I like writing and I am probably decent at it, when I write spontaneously.

In the same time I also started my coffee company. It was not called Chainergy, also because being strictly B2B it just had to be easy to pronounce. You can read about it on this blog (How not to start a business).

In the time being I also started to look, renouncing pretty fast after at importing bicycle components. Bikes are my other passion, however the market is saturated and it is difficult to offer high quality components, at an affordable price, without committing an amount of capital that I really did not have. Plus I moved back to Switzerland, found a permanent role, and somehow I put those plans back on the shelf.

Anyway, I kept on blogging on and off without too much enthusiasm.

Then I had my daughter and my job ended. I thought about using the blog to promote myself, but this also does not seem to work too much. So I decided I needed to pivot, again.

I have been soul-searching for the last few weeks, as job application kept on getting rejected and the little free-lancing activity I was doing, thanks to Covid, dried to a halt.

And I decided that yes, I need to pivot. But I have no idea where. I just know People should play on their strength, and I have a hard time, even after 20 years of professional experience, to point out which my strengths really are. I am a hard worker, yes. I am a keen observer. I like to talk and to write, and for the little creative writing I did, I suppose I am decent at telling story (I detest the word story teller, but that seems to be the rage now). Ah and I am good at telling a story, through numbers. That has been my work, after all.

So now the pivot. Where?

Well there are 2 things that need to pivot:

1. Me. As a professional. This one is easy: I need to find a new position. I am a father first and foremost. It is my duty to put food on the table. Both economically and physically, since I am an Italian father and the Italian component of my multinational family (no offense to non Italian, but a Southern Italian mother is unbeatable, when it comes to cooking, as a teacher).
2. Chainergy. Chainergy needs to pivot, because it is, for its little to no accomplishments, a part of me right now.

So where is Chainergy going to pivot? Towards my passions(with an s, plural). Which means Chainergy is not going to be, as it is now, a semi-dormant blog. Nor a company, nor anything like this.

It is a place to tell my story. And to tell other stories. And to discuss, hopefully.

Chainergy becomes the Chainergy coffee company in that it is not so much of a business, rather the sum of ideas that could be a business or anything else. It is a world view. A view from abroad, an alien view. My view. I am abroad physically and mentally.

But then why calling it a coffee company if it is not selling coffee?

Because international trade, and of coffee in particular, and alkaloids in general are my other passion (only the legal alkaloids, eh….).

So the Chainergy coffee company might be whatever I feel like it to be. Except work. It’s going to be a place to experiment, promote ideas, a bit of a mess really. But guess what, contrary to popular belief, life is a mess. Especially mine. Plans that work are actually an exception, not the rule.

So I am going to put it this way: Younger riders pick a destination and go, older Riders pick a direction and go.

This is my way to experiment with direction, as freely as I reasonably can.

I am still going to talk about energy and commodities, of course.

I am still going to promote, and maybe, but only if I feel like, sell coffee and other goodies. But only stuff that I would buy for myself.

Maybe it is going to become a publishing house. If I feel like.

More than anything, I want to spread ideas, and give my perspective. Which is alien, so maybe worth something.

It’s going to be a podcast as well, if I will feel like talking.

If it becomes a way of living, good, it does not need to be. To live, I am looking for a grown up, bona fide job. At the end of the day it is what I always did, and I always did it well.

So yes, I am going to be a story teller, as well. Mine and other stories I had the honor to learn along the way. So here are, for now, my final thoughts, I want to greet y’all with a few simple remarks.

Remember folks,

It’s not what you do, It’s How you do it.

What you do, changes constantly, how you do things defines who you are.

What you do is a passage, how you do it is what matters.

As I am entering my 21st year of professional experience, I have done a lot of different things. I have been driving trucks, I was a consultant, an accountant, pair of kitchen hands, an oil firm executive, and even the grumpiest accountant in a winter functional luxury firm. (Me, and I hate cold).

I have worked in 40+ countries and in 5 different continents.

And that is what I have learnt. No matter what you do, do your best, and do it well.

People will not remember your job title. People will remember how you were.

So this is my first words to y’all (first as the Chainergy Coffee Company). 

Follow these simple rules, and you will go far. Maybe not financially, but money comes, money goes, whereas no one can take away the respect and the self respect you earned .

1. Do whatever you do well. For your own good and peace of mind
2. Listen to other people, assume anyone can teach you something.
3. Speak the truth, or at least, learn when to keep your mouth shut.

And the rest will go as it has to. You cannot control it, anyway, but you can control who you are.