IAM1097- Coffee Blogger Specializes in Coffee, Food, and Travel

Yker Valerio is a coffee blogger writing to help coffee enthusiasts to enjoy all the coffee pleasures. After more than 10 years as a management consultant, Yker is a full-time content writer specializing in coffee, food, and travel.

• CEO Hack: (i) I pray in the morning and before going to sleep (ii) Expressing gratitude
• CEO Nugget: Give feedback in an accurate and honest manner
• CEO Defined: A person who makes the hard list and the most crucial decision for a company

Website: https://www.bonvivantcaffe.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bonvivantcaffe/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/bonvivantcaffe
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/68986119
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bonvivantcaffe

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Transcription

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00:12 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:40 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Yker Valerio of Bon Vivance Coffee. Yker, it's great to have you on the show.

00:50 – Yker Valerio

Thank you for having me.

00:52 – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Ekir so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Iker is a coffee blogger writer a coffee blogger writer writing to help coffee enthusiasts to enjoy all the coffee pleasures. After more than ten years as a management consultant, Eaker is a full-time content writer specializing in coffee, food, and travel, and he's been featured on our CEO blog nation. Yker, it's great to have you on. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:17 – Yker Valerio

Yes. I'm ready. Thank you very much for the invite.

01:20 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And so, to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started and what I call your CEO story.

01:28 – Yker Valerio

Yeah. Well, my story isn't too linear, but I'll keep it simple. A few years ago, I asked myself about, my top strengths and how I can use them for good. So, for years, I have had this feedback from my significant others, like, business partners and my supervisors they said, over and over again that my research and writing, abilities were my top positive qualities. So I focused, on those two and figured out which business I could start doing, research and writing, that wasn't a PhD career, obviously, but something that I couldn't enjoy as well. So I started to reflect on it because I was getting tired of my role as a management consultant. I started strong ten years ago when when I, was a lot younger.

But, recently, I just felt that I needed a change. So I'm grateful for my management consulting career. It helped me, to grow a lot, and to develop problem-solving, communication, and project-management skills. I mean, this is a very useful skill set for any entrepreneur or for anyone's way of living life. So I think I owe a lot to my previous career. So after I had years of dealing with these challenging projects and deadlines and annoying all these amazing people, I stepped back and and figured out that I wanted to start a career. So I started taking, freelancing, gigs, like side gigs as a writer and as a player because I'm a native Spanish speaker.

So I started to get, additional income doing this freelancing work, but, eventually, I started to enjoy it, quite quite a lot. So I decided to go fully independent and and work on it. So I started my blog, Bombivant, precisely to prove myself and to experiment with content creation, with SEO techniques, with affiliate marketing, and everything related to the monetization of content creation. So that's my story. My blog started as a business.

Like, I wanted to be, my main source of income. It has been growing and is promising all the work I have been doing with Bombi Van, but it has allowed me to have a couple of interesting contracts. I am a freelancer as well because it displays my work, both in English and in Spanish. So I have found interesting contracts with with Pongdiban as well. It's not only, like, a project to monetize on itself. So I  find that very interesting for me. And, well, for all the people that are actually at this moment, taking freelance, careers or starting their freelancing careers. And I think that online disability has been a major major advantage from that perspective.

05:01 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And, of course, doing it as well too. And so I know you touched a little bit upon, like, what you're doing at the blog and the site that you have and all the services that you provide. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you're serving your clients and how that process looks?

05:14 – Yker Valerio

Yes, sir. Well, my blog is about coffee, and it's, serving a wider community of people who like coffee but aren't that much into it yet. I feel that my blog is a bridge to get together the people who can experiment with regular coffee and are interested in exploring new things or learning more about coffee. But it isn't yet at the level of reading complex, and snobby articles because the content available about coffee right now is online and everywhere, or is it too simple, like funny memes about coffee, or is, something extremely technical about varietals and terroirs and all those fancy words around that that can get intimidated anyone.

I mean, the first when I started, researching coffee six years ago, it was scary to to enter the world. It can be technical. And some part of the community is really friendly. I have learned something that true experts are kind and generous with the things they know, but some other people can be snobby and be a bit harsh. So what I'm trying to do with my blog and with my content is to be, like, a friendly option, an opportunity for everyone curious enough to find a bit more about coffee. And doing that, I have been, showing which are my precisely my research and my writing abilities, both in English and in Spanish, so I can, create stronger relationships, not only inside the coffee community but with other content creators and with other people who might be interested in my, writing services. So, that's, that's my business about it right now.

07:29 – Gresham Harkless

What would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for yourself or the business or a combination of both, but what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

07:37 – Yker Valerio

Yeah. Well, it's strongly related to my strengths, which I want to transmit or brew by using a metaphor from coffee in my work and my business is about the quality and the originality of my content. Does it pay a lot of attention to that? I don't like to feel like I'm imitating something. Sometimes I develop other people's ideas. Many times, I do that, but I take great interest in finding interesting topics for my readers to ask many questions.

Sometimes when I ask questions, I get harsh answers. But most of the time, with really world-class experts, I felt I feel it was very impressive. I didn't know how to say it, but I was surprised in a very positive way. When I started Bondi Van, I started to dare to ask people who are on the front line of coffee, like, real world-class experts. I found their emails, and I started, to ask questions to them.

And they answered. I mean, it didn't take me weeks or make follow-ups over and over again. I'm talking about busy people, who are sitting on the Specialty Coffee Association board, who are leading the world of coffee research, who are senior researchers around the world, and they're they have this, amazing work available. But it's very technical, not because they want to be snowy, but because they are working in academia. So they use chemical, technical words. They use scientific methods. So the written content isn't appealing at all for anyone. So because they're churning this in an academic, public, and they have their standards.

So I started to reach them, and I have this feedback from them. I started to create relationships with experts with true experts. And I feel that's part of my secret sauce, how you say, is to find, a dig deeper than the search as SEO people say. I don't get it, just with what appears on the top ten in the Google query results. I go after answers from people who know what they're talking about and try to challenge, the myths and the prejudice about, coffee and everything I work with. Not only with coffee but with any content I work on, I try to go a bit further than the regular. So I would say that that's my secret sauce.

And that's secret sauce for for Bondi brand because we try to be entertaining. We try to be easy to understand, but we want to go, beyond the the common misunderstandings and myths around, coffee and the community.

11:00 – Gresham Harkless

Appreciate that. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:13 – Yker Valerio

There are a couple of very important things in my life. Well, I think for everyone, but in my case, it might sound a bit strange, I think that spirituality and art, which are not very, business-related, are my most powerful ways to reconnect, with my strongest self is the faster way I have and the most effective to boost my energy and to boost my motivation is to be more spiritual and appreciate the beauty, around me. So to be more specific, I do every day. I pray in the morning and before going to sleep. And every time I pray, I show gratitude, and I try to express my gratitude for all the good things.

12:18 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. And I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell, a client or something if you were to tell yourself if you were to hop into a time machine.

12:31 – Yker Valerio

Yeah. Well, for sure, I think that after my experience and the way I started my business, I think feedback is so valuable that it's important to learn how to give feedback. So, my nugget is to give feedback on the way Ernest Hemingway wrote his stories, to be descriptive, to be accurate, and to be honest with feedback because that's the best way to help people find a way to improve. So I think that's that's my knowledge for that matter.

13:10 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Yeah. I appreciate that, and it's so important to recognize those things and be able to lean into them as much as possible. So truly appreciate that nugget. And now I wanna ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're open now to different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. Show. So, Yker, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:28 – Yker Valerio

Yeah. Well, for sure, I have told you about this, and I think a CEO is the person who makes the hardest and the most crucial decisions for a company. And there is no way to work from it. I think that, if, I mean, if in a company, someone else is making the hard choices, then the CEO is not rightfully taking the chance that he should or she should be taking. I think it's most of the time, it's about the decisions and the ones that are necessarily nice, or those that aren't, like, how's the largest payback in a good or in a negative way, both are in the CEO's hands.

14:24 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I love that definition, and I love that you talked about sometimes making those hard decisions because I think a lot of times, it's the decisions that will kinda make or break an organization or a business. And I think that sometimes they're not always crystal clear about going right or left.

Sometimes it's not completely, know what you can see and what will happen, but you have to make those tough tough decisions because you are charting the path for the business, the organization. And a lot of times, the people that are affected where you're talking about clients or team members, by that organization. So I love that definition.

14:55 – Yker Valerio

Well, thank you very much.

14:57 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, I appreciate that, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about the blog and all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:12 – Yker Valerio

Oh, for sure. I will be more than happy to have you around my blog or any of my social media. I think it's going to be in the notes available. I know that the name of my blog isn't that easy to pronounce in English. So you can read it below, and, hopefully, I'll be more than happy to have you there.

15:35 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Igor. Just like, you know, you said, we'll have the links and information in the show notes just to make it even easier so that they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're doing. But I appreciate you for bridging that gap and helping people to understand coffee and all the awesome things.

And I think that a lot of times when we drill down on the experience and the gifts that we have, we teach so many other, so many different things. So I also love learning about how you've been able to take that content writing and be able to create connections and even other forms of content in so many ways. So thank you so much for taking some time out, of course, contributing to our site before, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:12 – Outro