321 : Marketing and Moral Injury w/ Josh Tarlo of Kiss the Hippo

How we market our values to potential employees and the consumer is often at odds with what we actually do. In a past episode we called this the “Values – Action Gap”. Question is, what is the result of this gap on the people who sign on with us and believe our marketing only to discover it was insincere at best or an outright lie at worst? For many the result is a condition called “Moral Injury” and it often has deep and long -term consequences on the individual, the company’s and the industry at large.

I first heard the term “Moral Injury” from a short but compelling Instagram post from todays guest, Josh Tarlo. In it he described both term and how this was and unfortunate part of many peoples experience working for specialty coffee businesses. After recording a short video in response I realized it is a much deeper topic and invited Josh to discuss it on the podcast.

Josh Tarlo has been in coffee for over 18 years.Josh has moved from working in cafes in Toronto to heading to Australia to work at places like Seven Seeds and Veneziano, where he got some time behind a roaster to ending up in the UK as a green buyer at Origin and now running the roastery operations and wholesale departments for a coffee company in London called Kiss the Hippo.

Josh also came 3rd in the Australian brewers cup before heading home to Canada to take gold and getting third in the world in 2013. After that he roasted coffee for competitors with 7 of the last 9 podium spots in the UK and took the title himself in 2018.

He has spent time in over a dozen coffee producing countries over dozens of trips. In the travels he judged for Cup of Excellence and had the pleasure of working with many producers directly.

On today’s show we take a deep dive into marketing, values, moral injury, and how we can create a more cohesive and consistent reality that backs up our marketing and creates environments of trust and integrity.

We discuss: