Meet Michael Butala

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michael Butala a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

I worked for a global contract manufacturer for 18 years. The company was great and, focusing on Healthcare at the end of my career there, much of my focus was on diagnostics accessories and devices. Through engineering and business I helped develop the products with our partners, offered engineering advice to help get products to market quickly and quote the programs in a way to help our employees and customers cross a win-win finish line. Given my education and tenure there, I coached our employees and customers for best practices and how to avoid pitfalls. It felt really good to help my coworkers and customers and ultimately, the end users of those products that need diagnostic solutions to healthcare. However, being a contract manufacturer means ultimately your customer gets the final say in their business and when it comes to dollars and cents, our OEM partners needed to do their for the good of their business and their shareholders which can have an adverse effect on the interpersonal relationships you grow with your teams. After a few short-sided decisions impacting many of my colleagues, I felt driven to have more control over what I do for a career and wanted to have a direct, positive impact to my community. This, ultimately, drove me to start a small business in my neighborhood.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Having a small business in your neighborhood is a great way to connect to your community and neighbors. I felt there was an underserviced market in coffee shops and record stores in the area and felt that given the variety of places I’ve lived and visited, I could provide a wider perspective on these things and give that outlet to people who may feel the same way. When choosing our business partners, I wanted to focus on things that are good for people and good for the planet. Anyone can get mass produced coffee or albums where the record company CEO’s fly to the moon and that doesn’t feel right. We focus on organic, fair-trade coffee and the majority of the albums we carry are from independent record labels or local musicians. Working directly with these labels ensure the most money goes to the artists and those artists get exposure to grow their music base. Organic and fair-trade coffee ensures that we are polluting the Earth and the villages who grow the coffee for us are treated well and paid fairly.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Treating all people with dignity and respect. Working for such a large company previously, you depend on a team day in, day out. The success of those team members is critical; at work and at home. Trying to do the best for people at work and outside of work is very important to me and when your teammates come into work with a smile, the entire team thrives and everyone benefits from it.

In my previous work, I’ve worn a lot of hats. If something needed done and no one knew how to do it, I’d volunteer to learn. If someone was overworked and couldn’t do their job, I’d carry some of the load. If people called off work or quit and people needed to cover their duties, I’d volunteer. I got to a point where I participated in every part of the manufacturing process, from customer set up, to materials , to AR/AP, engineering, design, manufacturing, secondary operations, packaging, quality return, corrective actions, end of life launches. Soup to Nuts. Maybe some of that was my engineering background and general curiosity, but learning all of these skills helped prep me to do many of the tasks required to run a small business.

There’s a saying that goes something like “The thing that made you weird as a kid will make you exceptional as an adult”. I’ve always loved music, the more obscure, the better. Sharing new music with people always drove me all the way back when I used to make tapes for people. I also started drinking coffee at an early age and would try so many different coffees everywhere I would travel. And yeah, I’d say I’m a little weird and the music I like is a little weird, and that’s okay. The musical tastes of folks who frequent our shop also may be obscure or are really looking forward to a new release and when people come in to get pick up albums, the excitement and smiles on their faces really makes me feel like I’m doing a good thing. Music isn’t silly, it connects to so many of your other senses and can sparks so many feelings and memories, good and bad. The good make people happy and the bad make people grow. Just being a small part of helping people connect, remember and grow through music…I mean, for me, you can’t beat it.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

Being that we serve to major industries, coffee and records.

Our ideal coffee customers are ones that can appreciate the taste of coffee. I joke that my favorite coffee flavor is “coffee”. We shy away from sugars and preservatives. We makes our syrups in house so we know everything that goes into them. You can’t get everyone off of sugared flavors but by making them in house, we feel a little better about serving them.

The ideal vinyl customer is one that can appreciate small, independent artists and labels. As cool as it is (or isn’t) that Richard Branson can fly to the moon when taking the lion’s share of profit in music production, people who can appreciate and support the artists go a long way in my book. It just feel right to give these smaller artists the airtime and exposure to thrive. There’s a TON of small bands out there making better music than the stuff on the radio and I’m proud to support that if I can.

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