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Colin Harmon

Colin Harmon

Four-time Irish Barista Champion and founder of Dublin's 3fe coffee, author of "What I Know About Running Coffee Shops" and "What I Know About Growing Coffee Shops"

Sep 28, 2026

12:12
The little voice goes like, wait, what are the other things I should think about or check before I sign this lease?
12:18
Well, first, improve what you have.
12:20
That's very important.
12:21
The second thing is that I assess the situation, just get rid of the excitement and maybe find a cynical friend and explain it to them.
12:27
What I see an awful lot of time is if someone whose business is not doing very well and they'll go and borrow money to start another one.
12:33
And you have to presume that you'll do the second one worse.
12:35
Just presume that because you're going to be tired.

34 MINS LATER

46:59
And they don't want to be part of it.
35:06
Is that why the Audi's for
35:08
sale? If I had the money to pay for it, I wouldn't pay for it.
35:12
Once that Audi's gone, you're
35:14
How much are they
35:15
worth? How much do they cost? Half a million.
35:18
Okay, so if you said to me, you can have one of them or a Bentley Bentayga and you're not allowed to sell it.
35:24
You have to keep it, right? So it's yours.
35:26
There's no monetary value.
13:36
What are they missing?
13:38
Well, I think you need to ask yourself what growth is.
13:41
Um, because, let's say if you've got one shop, okay, and you're, let's say you're, you're -- after you've paid yourself a wage and everything, you're getting like a 5% net, uh, profit off it.
13:53
You wanna grow the business.
13:55
Like, uh, it'd be far more worthwhile to like grow that net profit to 10%.
14:00
You don't have any extra staff.
14:01
You don't have any extra overheads.

7 MINS LATER

20:59
How did you start to learn the difference between growth that mattered to the business long term and growth that was simply growing your ego?
SiobhanSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
7:44
[laughs]
7:44
That's what people do on a sunny day.
7:46
Yeah.
7:47
They are called i- iced lattes, aren't they? Hmm.
7:53
This would be great if you, like, heated it and steamed it, like, and, uh, made it all frothy and all.
7:57
It'd be great.
7:58
Maybe serve it in a cup.

39 MINS LATER

46:41
Yeah

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