What do network marketing, faith, and a well-brewed cup of coffee have in common? In this rich and reflective episode of Coffee The Ultimate Treat Podcast, host Brian Baulch welcomes seasoned entrepreneur, author, and speaker John Solleder to share the routines, values, and mindset that have shaped his decades-long journey.

From his early days in network marketing to mentoring leaders around the world, John opens up about the power of consistency, the importance of maintaining good health, and how morning rituals set the tone for a purpose-driven life. It’s a conversation filled with grounded wisdom, accompanied by plenty of coffee talk along the way.

☕ In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• How John’s daily rituals fuel personal and professional clarity

• The intersection of faith, focus, and leadership

• Lessons learned from decades in the relationship-driven business world

• Why coffee isn’t just a drink—it’s a metaphor for how we live

Brew your favourite blend and listen in on this inspiring journey—one sip at a time.

Dive into the world of flavors and delight. Every drop brings health and fuels our life. Coffee, the ultimate tree podcast, takes the LEAP weights. Brew inspires and plants the seed.
Now let's explore curiously with our taste buds and ears with every delightful SIP with the host, coffee the ultimate tree. Welcome back everyone to another wonderful episode, and we're great to have with you with us today. John solder, I think it is, sorry, is that the correct pronunciation? It's closer. It's solider. In Europe, they say so leaders, kind of the German pronunciation. But okay, that could be the Australian pronunciation.
Okay, so it's wonderful to have you here today, John and we just really love to deep dive into your experiences in entrepreneurship and networking and conversation and getting together people and growing,
you know, from small organizations to large organizations. I can see here,
will, you know, really deep dive into what everything that you've done there, John and I see that you're a speaker, an acclaimed author, a veteran in the direct selling industry. So this will be something that will be very intriguing to all our listeners. So to stay tuned, guys, and let's get into it with John today, and he's going to share you some tips, hints and great experiences in many years. So you really want to get something out of it today. So John, where would you like to start?
So you're just telling me that you're you've had some experiences here in in Australia. How did you find Australia and
and how did you find the the networking and the collaboration here in Australia and and being able to sit down and have a coffee with people. Did you find that as valuable to you? Yeah,
the people in Australia, very, very friendly people. First of all, great networkers. They like to talk. They like to communicate. They like their coffee. You're right, lots of cups of coffee when I was there. I was there twice. I did two rounds of meetings there. This is a while ago, early 1990s
right? Okay, we had a very consumable product that we brought to Australia, and I did that, as I was telling you, before we started, I saw a lot of your country, big country to see, by the way, yeah, I remember flying from Sydney to Perth, and I realized when I got to Perth that that flight was longer than New York to Los Angeles. To give people an idea, you know, how big your country is. I mean, they know how big it is, but, you know, they may not have ever made the trip. I find a lot of people have never been to Perth, but yeah, for sure, in Perth too. You know, I don't know if you remember the TV show mash, but yeah, yes, yes, definitely. Sign with all the cities you know, back in North America that people were from that, you know, and how, what the mileage distance was. I remember being in Perth, and I think I saw a mileage sign that I was, like, 11 or 12,000 miles, I think, from New York, like, like, you couldn't. I lived in New York at the time. I lived in Dallas now, but it was okay, yep, graphically further from home than I was at that moment. And but the funny part is, everybody was speaking English, so I felt very comfortable, you know, very at home. Beautiful, beautiful country. Friendly people, great networkers, great coffee,
great everything. The food was good, the hospitality was wonderful, and just a very, very pretty country, and got to get back there at some point down the road
was there, without naming too many brains, because, you know, we want to, you know, try to incite entrepreneurship in to people's creativity. But was there any certain coffee in Australia, Australian brands that stood out to you? You know, I don't remember, to be honest with you, because so long ago, yeah, but I did go to some of the coffee shops in Sydney, for example,
and I found that they had a multitude of brands, both,
I guess, some that has grown in Australia, because, I guess there are such a big country, you know, you're close enough to the equator to grow coffee, and then some that were from some other parts of the world that, you know, we don't get here in North America.
We didn't at that time. Anyway, maybe we do today, but at that time we didn't. But, yeah, they all very good brands and but very popular. I was surprised, because I thought fosters was going to be the number one drink in Australia, but I found out instead that it was actually coffee. People prefer coffee, even to the great fosters, oil camp here, they still have the oil can beer there. They big, the big oil cans. I think so. But we're, we're more leaning to when it comes to beers and things like that. We're more leaning towards, uh, boutique beers here in in Australia. Now, okay, yeah, a lot of that happened over here too. By the way, little local breweries popping up, you know, yeah, great, great country, great experience. I still, I used to have a picture. I don't know where it went, but I had a picture of me at the zoo, the famous zoo, holding a baby
koala. Very nice. That was an experience. Because I think the only place in North America to see a koala is at the San Diego Zoo, which I've never been to. I've been to the Sydney, okay, the San Diego one, which is much closer. Alright, interesting, yeah. And so,
how valuable Do you think? You know? Well, obviously, here in Australia, you know, sitting down and networking and have
what percentage on how valuable Do you think it is to have a an environment like a coffee environment to network, and how often do you think that? I mean, you've probably had 1000s of networking small events and large events. How valuable Do you think it is to
entrepreneurs and small business owners?
It's actually a great question. I'm glad you asked it. It's totally valuable, because what it does is it gives people a comfort level of normalcy. Because, let's face it, anytime we're invited to a meeting of any sort, yep, we're always anticipating that we're going to be sold. You know, the person on the other end of the invitation, they want to sell us something, even if it's, yeah, relative, right? But when you get coffee involved.
That's something that they have at home. That's something that they have a comfort level with. It puts them at ease to be able to then listen to, you know, either, why is that coffee special? If, if coffee is what you're marketing, or if you want something else to just kind of break the ice of, hey, let's have a cup of coffee and talk.
And it just it breaks down all of those social barriers and all of those fears that people have. It's like, Hey, where's and I've told people over the years, because I still meet people at coffee shops here in the state, one right on the corner, I could walk to a Starbucks, actually. And, okay, yeah, when I lived in Canada, they had a chain called Tim Horton. Same thing, you know, everybody went, Okay, yep. And what was nice about that was, it's be like, hey, look, I'll buy you a cup of coffee,
and if you like what I have to tell you, great, we'll do business. And if not, we'll shake hands and have a cup of coffee, and we'll spend 1520 minutes together. And you know, I'll give you one other example of why that's that's such a great way to do any business.
When I'm living over in Europe, I lived over in Europe at one point as well. People are saying, Wow, this guy's lived all over the world. How do you wind up in boring Dallas, Texas? That's a story in itself. But anyway, when I was living over Europe, I lived in Milan for a short time,
okay,
I would go to these little bistro cafes to meet prospects for my business or distributors in my business, right, right? We'd always meet at one of these little things, and we're very social. And then
I found out that the fella who started, he didn't really start Starbucks, but he actually bought Starbucks that he had patterned those European cafes into what Starbucks is, where you can go in, be in there, 1520 minutes, have a cup of coffee, read the newspaper or meet somebody for business, or meet, you know, meet a friend, socially, whatever.
It was kind of a break in the day. You know, from all stresses of the day, it was like that 15 or 20 minutes of getting in, having a cup of coffee, what was nice, and if you could tie it to business, all the more better, because the person you're meeting to, they're coming maybe from sitting in traffic or dropping a kid at school or dealing with, you know, something in their their respective livelihood, you know. So, you know, there's all of these things that go with a coffee brand, that are social pluses that no other, frankly, no.
The product has in the direct selling space.
Interesting, John, and it'll be very insightful for the audience I believe. And say, John, you know, just, let's go back, because I believe the audience. I really want to know you've got some great nuggets there. You've got a great, lot of experience. How, how valuable Senate, you have started businesses and things like that.
How valuable Do you believe coffee was for you, starting out in your early days and even now? Well, you know, it's always been the social fabric. You know, it's always been whatever, like, I don't drink alcohol. I stopped drinking I was 20 for personal reasons.
Because of that, I've always gravitated towards, hey, let's meet for a cup of coffee and talk.
I've done that all over the literally, all over the world. I mean, I've done it in Europe, I've done it in your country. I've done it in New Zealand. I've done it in Japan, I've done it in Hong Kong, I've done it in Manila,
I've done it in Dallas, Texas, very, very important. But the other thing is, when I was on the corporate end of network marketing, which three and a half years with a company here in Dallas,
our day started, and our thought session started with coffee on the table, always,
and we would have these big, like,
about, well, even taller than that, wider than I could spread my hands. We would get these big carafes of coffee, okay? And a whiteboard, yeah, you know, we were all coming from home, so everybody had their their workout or their breakfast or whatever, so, but we get together at our office, and we would have Think Tank sessions, yeah, coffee.
And we took that company from $162,000
a month to $700 million in sales. Wow. The owner passed away. I wound up leaving for some other opportunities and all of that. And the company is no longer a networking company. But my only point about that is we revolved it all around the coffee, like and we had assignments the owner would get one day, I get another day. It was a third guy in those meetings, he gets the third day. And everything revolved around coffee. And it was like, you know, if you didn't bring the coffee, you had to go back to get the coffee, so we could start the meeting and have the meeting, and we'd kill crafts of coffee. I mean, we, you know, two to three crafts of coffee were not unusual for three guys, and sometimes we'd have other people in distributors or vendors and and things fourth or fifth person. But the coffee was always right in the middle of our meetings. And I think it does stimulate, you know, the thought process, but also, once again, it gives that, that, what would you call it,
hominess
environment, right? Because it's something you also do at home. So, you know, once again, we always had coffee. So coffee goes with everything. Coffee is a non offensive product, you know, you know, you don't know, these days, a lot of people that maybe have had difficulty with drinking in the past, if you offer them an alcoholic beverage, you might offend them or that, or they have to explain themselves, which they may not be comfortable sharing with the world, you know, whatever. Like, my case, I gave a drink, and because my father was an alcoholic, I don't want to be one. Yeah, I'm like, telling people that, but I never was one. But other people, they, you know, they don't, whatever reason they don't want to tell their whole story, and sometimes they do. But the point I'll make about that is, you offer somebody a cup of coffee, if they're not a coffee drinker, they'll have tea. If they're not a coffee or tea drinker, they'll have water or juice or soda or some other beverage. Exactly, offend somebody by offering them a cup of coffee. Yes, and you're not going to, you're not going to offend them either, inviting them for a cup of coffee, even if in their thinking, Well, I don't drink coffee. I'll drink something else. It's, it's the metaphor for, let's have a comfortable meeting that isn't going to have a lot of stress to it and a lot of pressure, right? We're meeting for, versus whatever. So I think it's a great way to build, you know, any any business, direct selling businesses or other businesses, and use the coffee around, you know, selling an insurance product, or selling a piece of real estate, or selling, you know, whatever else there is, most of the good car dealerships in the world
always have a coffee bar. Wow, amazing. You go to buy a once again. Why? Because they want you to relax, right? They want? Yes, yes, I'm making a big decision, a buying decision. Here I'm going to spend some money. You want that individual to be comfortable? And sometimes, if they're, if they're having a cup of coffee while they're making that decision, they it helps them to relax a little bit, you know? So there's, there's many, many benefits to to.
Me to that unique beverage found so many years ago and continues to grow. The coffee market is a huge market, and just gets bigger and bigger every year. It's it's very amazing, John, how it's grown and
now, with our short time that we have and
our wonderful listeners, would love to be able to get some nuggets from you, John, in within the mentoring and the the importance of mentoring and collaboration and and networking, John, with all your experiences in network marketing and growing businesses and helping supporting businesses,
just give us some of your valuable lessons that come to mind right now that for our listeners who are in that type of industry. So if you can just go ahead and see share what's off the cuff for you anyway. Well, I'll do it two ways. Number one, okay, my one of my books, Okay, excellent. 2020, moving up, 2020, beyond on
Amazon. Of course,
in this book, I have a lot of things that you can do, and I'll give you a simple example to answer your question.
One thing is called the 10 Penny principle,
and this is really very, very, very simple. When you leave your home in the morning, yes, 10 pennies in your left pocket.
Every time you talk to a prospect, or meet with a prospect, be it about your product or your opportunity or both. Right? Most of the time, presentations about both, yes, take it from your left pocket and stick it over in your right pocket. Okay, that sounds very, very simple, and it is very, very simple, but here's the real point. It's going to get you into the habit of talking to 10 people per day. Now, if you're talking about coffee, just about everybody drinks coffee one way, shape or form, decaf, regular, etcetera, etcetera. So if you're talking about coffee, for example, or they realize you're listening to maybe marketing vitamins or, you know, skin cares or other products as well.
It works because it gets you into that discipline
that I found coming into network marketing in 1983
which seems like a lifetime ago, and it is 43 years ago, was the fact that I was a disciplined person,
and when my mentor said, here's what you do, you put 10 pennies in your left pocket. You talk to 10 people a day. Once you get in that habit, you won't need to 10 pennies, because you'll just do it automatically. And that's kind of what happens. So that's that's one of many things that I talked about in this book, moving up, and they can get a digital if they want. That's one idea. Another idea is really how to build systems. Because people buying the systems, you know, if you look at McDonald's, for example, yes, not the best product, yeah, exactly right, yeah, they sell a lot of junk. Yeah, you got salads and stuff now too in most places, but the end of the day, they don't have the best hamburger certainly.
Yes, they, why do they sell more than everybody else? Because they have systems to do. So I
talk a little bit about systems and why you have to have systems and network marketing, awesome, right? That people can plug into
these days. What we're doing right now. Podcast, okay, get yourself Yep. I mean, there's, there's 4.2 million podcasts, for example, going on as we speak in English. This is in the English speaking world. Yes, that number has grown from 3.7 million a few short years ago. So people are getting into podcasting. Great way to communicate, like, yes, great way to amazing product and opportunity a business, etc, etc. So that's what this book is about. That's a couple of things. And then, of course, leave nothing to chance. That was the second book that came out.
And my podcast as well. And in this book is more some of the things that some of the people I've mentored have done in the business, some of their ideas and some of their strategies. So this one's more my stuff, and then this was more other people's stuff that I kind of report on. Okay, I own my own story, but you know, couple of things that people can do. Okay?
You know,
people tell you all the time in network marketing, well, make a list. Well, that sounds great, but That's old school. Yep. Okay, yep, but here's what I suggest to people,
who do you like working with?
Great, yeah. Great question. Create the environment of Who do I actually like working who I'm comfortable with, who, who.
Who do I to build a business? I got to build more of those people, obviously, but I got to start somewhere. Let me find the people, whether it's 10 people, 15 people, 30 people, that I really enjoy their company, because we're going to be working very intimately. We're going to be doing conference calls and three way calls, and if we live locally, face to face meetings. So we're going to be spending a lot of time together. If we don't like each other, we probably shouldn't work together, but exactly, we can overcome a lot of stuff, and we can get a lot of the heavy lifting done in a business helping each other where, Hey, I can't do the meeting today on this side of town, but you've got a prospect over there. Would you mind doing the meeting? And I got a couple of people on my other team, for example, that are in that area of town. Would you mind, you know, having those folks come and one of those people say, of course, the more the merrier, right? So, yeah, it's like that where you're building a team. Don't look at it so much as you're building a sales force. Sales forces connotation, I look at it as building a team. If I was a coach in sports, okay, for example, you've got, you've got something I'm a big fan of, by the way, you're, you're Aussie, your Aussie football, I'm a big fan. Yep. Okay, yeah. And if you're building a team, okay, in your city, for Aussie football, you want the best head coach. You want the best coaches. Yes. Sports trainers, you want the best athletes, obviously, okay, yes. And believe it or not, you even want the best home office so that they can continuously get you the right people. A guy gets hurt, they can get you another guy in that position. And, of course, the sixth thing you need great fans.
Yes, the great organizations in Aussie football, the great organizations in rugby, the great organizations in professional sports throughout the world, right? Yep, all of them have one common thing they understand building the team, and that members of the team are going to change over the course of time. People are going to age out, they're going to get sick, they're going to die, they're going to quit. So you're constantly building a team.
But still, my advice starting out, though, start with the people that you like. Okay, just start there, because it's nice and simple. Now you've made it social. You can have your coffee, get togethers and strategize. Okay, figure out what we're going to do. Hey, everybody, listen, I don't know everybody that you know. You don't know everybody that I know. So let's do this. I'm going to bring one of my friends to our coffee meeting on Tuesday night. You bring one of your friends. Let's tell the other three people on the team to bring one of their friends. And now five people who knew each other brought five people who don't know each other. Now we have 10 people. We're trying to build a little business together. And at the same time, are building relationships and friendships. You know, the most important ship, okay, is not an ocean going line or the most important ships that we build in life are relationships. So now relationships with one another, right? And all of a sudden this person doesn't know this person, but they say, Oh, hey, my kid goes to the same school as yours, right? Or, yeah, yeah, your team is yours. Or they, they, or maybe they go to the same church, or maybe whatever, you know what I mean, like, find those common grounds to talk about. Definitely on the team goes from five people to 10. Well, that now
do a little duplication in your mind. Okay, the next meeting. Hey guys, let's, let's all, let's all commit to bringing you know, one to two people new now, all of a sudden you got 30 or 40 people. And now that, and that's how I built everywhere. I've built in the world. I've built in countries in my life
successfully, where I've had the biggest team in my respective company in that country, and by the way, even foreign languages, I've been very successful in the Spanish speaking market. I've got over a million distributors, for example, in my current company, awesome, right? It's crazy. A million people. I mean, they're all not active, obviously, yeah, yeah, yeah, when you think about it, like 10 socks, yeah, and I've done that, and people say, Well, how have you done that in a foreign market? How have you done that in a market where I could speak a little Spanish but not much? Well, you know what? I found a couple of English speaking leaders that I taught my business to, where their first language is Spanish, but they're fluent in English. They understand what I do, and then they shared the same in the Spanish market. And the business just did, like we just said, it just kind of mushroomed into, you know, over a million human beings that have joined my company over the last 14 years in that particular country. So, you know, it's not like you have to have a secret sauce. It works. You know, people are people everywhere. What? What do people want? I mean, you gotta always think about it this way. You gotta always see see it from the other person's perspective. Most of us want safety, right? We want to Yes, for our family to be safe. We want to live in a safe environment.
It. We want to have some money in the bank, okay? For Iranian yes, we want to put some money aside if we have children, for their education, if we don't have children, or maybe they're grown already, when we start our business, we want some money for retirement, so that in our later years we can have the money to do some of the things maybe that we couldn't do while we were raising our kids. For example. Yeah, definitely. My wife and I are there now. Our youngest just turned 20, so we're getting to that point where, you know, we don't have to worry about kids. You know, they picked out themselves for the most part, and you know, so But once again, those are fundamental things that people are interested in. What else are they interested in? They're interested in their health. Yes, definitely, you know, they're interested in having a product like yours that's a delivery system of herbs that taste good in something, right? Yes, yes, your mind's pain, your other nutrients, coffee as a delivery system, which is brilliant, by the way.
But you know, point being, it's like they're interested in their health and longevity. Yes, yes. They want to be around to enjoy themselves, right? And once again, what goes through their mind, knows, how do I fund that? How do I fund it when I stop working? Right? So they need that plan B, side hustle, side gig, whatever you want to call, yeah, right? Different parts of the world call it different things. It's the same thing. It's a part time thing that you start during your working years, while you're doing whatever it is that you do full time, if you're in construction or you teach school or you drive a truck, or you're an accountant or a lawyer or whatever, during those years you're doing this type of business, to get to the point where you replace that income from that job? Yes, touch your savings so you could continue to have the same level of income that you've always had. So you leave your your real investments for down the road. I mean, these are these are fundamental things as you talk to people around the world, whether they're my age, I'm in my 60s, whether they're in their 40s, whether in their 20s, they've all got pretty much the same ideas, okay, of what it is that they want out of life. Pretty people are pretty basic where, you know, God made us very basic at the end of the day. And, you know, our needs are pretty basic, but getting to those needs successfully, that's the hard part. That's That's the secret sauce, and that's why we build businesses like we're both building to, you know, make sure that we put ourselves in that environment. We help other people to do the
same. Definitely, that's great. Wonderful. Lots of nuggets there, John and wonderful tips. We'll put them into, transcribe them all on our website for our listeners and John, it's very important now listeners will need to know where you are,
where they can find you. What you know platforms is the best platforms for them to go to.
My websites. Johnsolider.com, s, O, L, E, D, E, r.com, my name's right there. You can see it there. John solider,
my podcast, we're up to love to have you as a guest. By the way, I'll have Jose send you information for that. All right, awesome. Definitely to hear some some of what you're doing as well.
By it, leaving nothing to chance is my podcast. You can also just get there on YouTube with my name, John solider,
about 250 shows now. And yep, awesome. We're growing that platform. But just to reach me, John solider.com, it's just a real basic website. You're not asked by it. It's just something we put together just for this purpose so people can reach us. You know, yeah, really. And we're doing a lot of interesting things. We've got a new show that we're going to be launching next month in Anaheim, California, a show devoted to human longevity that's going to be a new podcast that I'm doing with another another. Wow, awesome, intriguing. So we're doing, we're doing a lot of interesting things around, you know, the health and nutrition world, as well as, you know, the direct selling, you know, industry, obviously, that I've spent all these many, many years in, yeah, yeah, John, from all of what you've spoken about, it's just amazing nuggets, but there's something that comes to me, John, you don't seem like a person that's going to retire. Am I correct in saying that? Yeah, I have no I'm 64 now.
No desire to retire at all,
and here's why,
financially I could and like I see, kids are grown now, 200 stone college, but that's already paid for, so it's not, it's not so much financial. Yeah, I think we're living at the most unique time in human history. Mm, hmm, because of things like pi.
Casting. Things like, yes, things like Riverside zoom, all these technologies that make doing business easier and more fun. Yeah, tire, number one. Number two, I got a lot to contribute the the, you know, business has been good to me. You know, I started out as a poor college kid, you know, looking to make some extra money. And, you know, 42 years later, I still have a business. Not a lot of people can say that in most businesses.