Reap what you sow – Investing in your team is never a money loss

Cat & Cloud Podcast

Cat & Cloud

Education

4.8 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we reflect on what it really means to invest in your team—beyond payroll, bonuses, or budgets. From traveling for competitions to origin trips and team dinners, we talk about how creating experiences, connection, and shared memories pays dividends that can’t be measured on a spreadsheet. Investing in people isn’t just money out; it’s energy in, the kind that builds culture, loyalty, and long-term impact. At its core, this episode is about the ripple effect of care. When you show people they matter through opportunity, trust, and small moments of generosity, that energy comes back through better hospitality, stronger relationships, and a deeper sense of purpose. The real ROI isn’t just retention or performance—it’s a team that feels seen, inspired, and proud to carry the vision forward. 🔖 Chapters – 00:47 The Ritual thang 05:55 Where people go after coffee 11:09 How it was – Baca’s dream of the good ol’ days where people just talked sh!t 16:31 Investing vs. money out 29:56 The Payoff 🔗 Links – Cat & Cloud: Instagram www.instagram.com/catcloudcoffee/ Webstore www.catandcloud.com/ We are Cat & Cloud Coffee. Started by three friends trying to pursue their passions with the mission to inspire connection by creating memorable experiences, and we created this podcast to continue forming those connections inside and out of our cafes. The Cat & Cloud podcast was created as a space for us to share our experiences in the coffee industry and starting a business. Each week we sit down to talk about new challenges as business owners, how we utilize our mission and values to make decisions, and answer questions from our listening community. If you’re looking to expand your coffee knowledge, get some advice for your own small business, or just like the vibes, give us a listen! Enjoy!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Santa Cruz makes you soft. Yeah, Santa Cruz does make you soft. You live here, you can't live anywhere else. You're like, well, the weather's perfect. In between 16, 80 degrees pretty much forever. The nights. Freaking dialed in, dude. It does feel like fall, though, so welcome to fall, everybody. At least over here, we turned the page. We went from humid and warm last week to cool.
0:22.0	Cool.
0:37.7	Yeah. Like cool mornings heating up throughout the day. Yeah. Burn off the marine layer. I know. Someone was saying, like, does that mean it's not warm anymore? And I was like, no, it still gets to be like 80 degrees, but then at night it drops to the 50s. bite in the air in the morning and at night.
0:38.2	Yeah.
0:37.7	And sit outside and just be... to be like 80 degrees, but then at night it drops to the 50s. It's just like a bite in the air in the morning and at night.
0:38.2	Yeah.
0:42.2	And sit outside and just be so crisp.
0:43.7	You need a sweatshirt.
0:45.1	Yeah.
0:46.2	Solid hoodie weather.
0:48.1	I heard you into the ritual thing.
0:48.7	I had not heard.
0:49.4	It happened. That was a ritual thing.
0:50.5	20 year anniversary party.
0:53.0	Was that Monday night?
0:53.8	What was that? It was Saturday night. Okay. It was super fun. Yeah. It was rad. It was, um, there was a lot of people there. Yeah. And a lot of people I didn't know. Yeah. So you get there and then you, you sign in and there's name tags for everybody. Write your on it and then what era you work the era
1:13.3	you work there yeah what what years you were there so there was uh like a core crew that i kicked it with
1:19.8	basically all night yeah people from my era obviously and then there's just a ton of other people
1:25.6	a lot of people hadn't seen for for years and years and years and years. Yeah, I saw Crystal was there. That's cool. Crystal was there. Like, hung out with Crystal. Pele. Nice. Pele's educator for Blue Bottle. Now he's been at Blue Bottle for just like 13 years or something. Crazy like that. Shane, Vanya,
1:46.0	Oh, Ilean, just this whole whole squad.
1:49.3	It's super cool to see all those people.
1:51.5	Do they all live in the bay?
	...

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