Issue 150

January 2017

KEITH JARDINE

UFC and Strikeforce veteran brewing up a business.

The coffee industry has changed my life, and it’s all really by accident. My business partner, Tait Fletcher, who was on the second season of The Ultimate Fighter, one day we found ourselves both reading at an audition.

Afterwards, he was telling me about butter coffee – which sounded strange to me.

Soon after I tried using MCT for the first time. It’s magical – you mix it in the coffee. I was tired, but I tried it as I was driving to the yoga studio and I got this incredible sense of well-being and euphoria.

I thought there must be something in the coffee. Why was I feeling so awesome? I thought I was going to crash like I was on a drug or something. It lasted for a long time and that was a way to get me into the Paleo diet style eating of high fats and low carbs.

I became obsessed with nutrition and the coffee lifestyle and finding better coffees to make this work better.

I met these high-end realtors in Albuquerque that have their own farm in Colombia – it’s real high-end, single-estate coffee. We started roasting certain coffees that tasted great. We weren’t even thinking about doing a business at the time. I just wanted everyone to try this at least once.

The Caveman Coffee Co became a business organically. We bought our own MCT oil and the brand is getting good recognition. It’s great. A lot of people want to be a part of it. We’ve partnered up to provide Onnit with its coffee. MMA fighters like Jon Jones, Diego Sanchez put our patches on their gear and tweet about it. It’s very humbling.

When we started, I asked myself, ‘How am I just supposed to be good in the business world? How am I just supposed to be an entrepreneur?’ I have made a lot of mistakes with other projects. There’s no template. I don’t think my dad has ever had a personal bank account.

"Coming from that, how am I supposed to be savvy with my money? So I read a lot and try to learn from other business people.

Initially I got in just because I was really geeky about coffee and I wanted to share that passion with everyone. It just happened to turn into a business.

Now it’s about customer service and employee relations and shipping. That’s an educational process in itself.

In MMA, I had Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn coaching me – the two best coaches in the world. I wasn’t trying to just come up with techniques and moves on my own. As a business I have to find mentors in the same way.

They don’t have to know I’m studying them, but I need to read books and whenever I meet successful people I want to learn from them. I want to know what they studied and how they made it to where they are today.

What do you do when you are done fighting? ‘Hey, Keith Jardine came over and flushed out my toilet the other day.’

Like, what do you do? I opened up a school that failed: Mean 1 MMA. It failed, partly, because I didn’t know enough. I didn’t want to be the ‘has-been ex-fighter’ who decides to coach because they have nothing else going on or no other skills to offer.

Tait once told me, ‘Don’t ever let your memories become larger than your dreams.’ I don’t ever want to live in the past. The best is still to come. I don’t want to say I peaked in 2007 when I fought Chuck Liddell. Next year will always be my biggest year.