Finding The God Particle
“It’s not about how good we are. It’s about how good we do.”
These were the words of Paul, the owner of Hout Bay Roastery close to where I live. This particular roastery has become a destination in Cape Town. It’s also where I write most of my mailers.
I asked Paul about his approach to business and he recited the above aphorism to me. What I believe he meant by it is that there is an ongoing battle between worrying what we look like, as opposed to learning by doing.
‘Learning by doing’ is a central tenet within Heavy Chef’s list of ingredients. It’s also a key component of the most important frameworks available to humanity - the scientific method. It’s also very much at the heart of the Lean Startup Method, which we’ve covered many times at Heavy Chef.
I recently read a great book called Shop Class As Soulcraft, given to me by two close friends for my birthday. The author Matthew Crawford writes how he left a settled career in academia for a hard-grafting entrepreneurial path as a motorcycle shop owner.
Crawford encourages the reader to getting our hands dirty and smearing grease on our shirts. In an age of AI, constant Zoom calls and neuralink, there is a certain spirituality in returning to wood and nails, to the soil, to our tools.
Paul Myburgh, the owner of Hout Bay Roastery, knows this feeling well. After winning multiple awards in the film industry, he made a remarkable decision to leave his previous life behind. He took off in probably the most polar opposite direction to the film world anyone could think of.
Paul spent seven years with the San people in the Kalahari. If you ask him nicely, he might tell you about the experience. How he learned their language, their traditions and their craft. Together with his tribe members, he fought lions and hyenas. He now carries a big knife with him everywhere he goes (mainly to scare off unwanted customers).
Paul eventually returned to civilisation to open his Roastery, which many call the best coffee in South Africa.
The interesting thing about Paul’s approach to business is that he is wary of growing for the sake of growth. Many people have approached him to franchise or mass produce his magical beans. However, if it means that the quality will suffer, he won’t do it. Paul is choosing the hard road - the road of learning by doing.
People often accost Paul about how he consistently delivers such good quality and he just smiles. Coffee entrepreneurs know that consistency is one of the most difficult things to attain in the trade. I asked him what’s in his recipe, and he responded, “The God particle.”
It’s hard to do hard things. Ben Horowitz wrote a brilliant book about it. The entrepreneur life is predicated upon hard things.
Recently, Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman reported a new insight. When we do hard things that we don’t necessarily want to do, there is a crucial part of our brain called the Anterior Midcingular Cortex (aMCC) that gets bigger. Huberman suggests that stimulating our aMCC will create unbeatable discipline in our routines, but also result in longer, healthier lifespans.
This is something that the great philosopher Mike Tyson alluded to on Rogan in his epic interview with the champ, “Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.”
Maybe in doing the hard things is where each of us can learn to find our own ‘God particle’.
Peace -
