Philly Mag’s Nov. 6 ThinkFest attracted a conglomerate of students, professionals and educators to Gerri C. Lebow Hall’s auditorium, including La Columbe’s owner and founder, Todd Carmichael.
“I’m famous for doing nutty things,” Todd Carmichael said. Carmichael is a man known for walking from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole, crossing deserts and drifting for years in the South Pacific. Recently he’s taken on different kind of challenge: running his own business.
Carmichael is the proud owner of La Columbe, a Philadelphia-based coffee company that pioneered in a cafe location at 130 South 19th Street, beside Rittenhouse Square. On-stage at Thinkfest he presented his theory that the big business enterprises so prevalent in the United States present smaller businesses, like his own, with revolutionary opportunities.
Carmichael highlighted that startup businesses center around anxiety and exhaustion, much like the stressors he faced during his global survival expeditions,. The rapid development and quick-paced nature of the business today only allow for opportunities if one can recognize the revolution going on in their target field. For Carmichael, this meant examining the shift in the food and beverage industry.
“The companies that fed my parents will not feed my children,” Carmichael said to the audience. “That’s not an evolution. That is upheaval. And this is where I believe the biggest opportunities for us as a city, for you as a person, for my company—can be harvested. It’s in revolutionary times.”
Detailing the fact that many of today’s biggest companies see their large size as an advantage, Carmichael, described how he saw this characteristic as a weakness when entering the business. To him being big is a liability, because in order to be successful, he stresses that every company should have two things: vision and values.
“That vision thing is tough to hold onto when companies get bigger,” he emphasized, talking about how the popular phrase “too big to fail” can easily transition into “too big to lead.” These are the ideals from which his company La Columbe got their start.
“If your company values transportability and shelf life overnutrition you’re probably too big to lead,” he highlighted.
Referring to those with dreams of dabbling in entrepreneurship, he concluded his speech, acknowledging that placing his startup in Philadelphia was critical to his business’s successful cultivation.
“We’re going to find our opportunities in upheaval. We’re going to find our opportunities by applying our ideas and our values and our visions to a time of revolution,” Carmichael said.
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