The Original Mr. Hormozi

My father Chireh was the original Mr Hormozi.

He started out more than 20 years ago as an engineer in Spain. Back then (actually, now too, come to think of it!) if you were an engineer, you were expected to be able to fix everything and anything: from fridges to air conditioners, from camera system to coffee machines.

It turns out, coffee machines broke down a lot. He had a lot of experience with coffee machines.

Shortly afterwards, he moved to London and you guessed it, ended up selling and fixing coffee machines. It was then though that he had his moment of brilliance.

He already had his foot in the door thanks to the espresso machine sales, so he thought why not give customers the full service – machine, beans and maintenance.

With just 100kg of Spanish coffee and a little scooter, he kicked off his coffee company.

It turns out the people of London loved this fresh new coffee as much as my dad because in no time at all, he was all over London fixing machines and selling “Cafe Silvestre”. He was enjoying chatting to customers and talking about his new passion – coffee. He even swapped his scooter for a Transit because the coffee no longer fitted in his backpack. Eventually, he started renting a small warehouse too.

But the story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Everything changed when, one day, a fresh delivery from Valencia arrived. But the prices had doubled! My father couldn’t keep the business running with costs jumping up like this. It seemed as though his supplier wanted to squeeze him out and take the UK market for himself. It was a pretty rough time for the Hormozi family, I’ll tell you that.

I was just about to leave school then, aged 16, and my father pulled me to one side after school and told me that by learning to roast coffee beans, I could save the family business. And that is exactly what I did.