Balancing being a father and running multiple coffee social media accounts, how does Justin Piercy from DaddyGotCoffee do it?
Justin Piercy, from Ontario, Canada is not a barista but is a coffee lover with a strong drive and passion for growing his community. Justin’s main job is working for a church doing digital communications. As he navigated Instagram for his job, he also began experimenting using his personal account which led to him creating his coffee Instagram account: @DaddyGotCoffee where he inspires others on their daily coffee journey.
Justin Piercy with his two kids
Justin began his Instagram account, DaddyGotCoffee in November 2020 as an experiment. He has been in the coffee community since his early twenties and he is 35 years old now. Justin has always wanted to start a coffee blog but never did and was posting coffee photographs on his personal Instagram, so he took the leap to make an account solely for coffee. He learned a lot more about specialty coffee after joining the Instagram community and started filming himself being a regular dad that is trying to figure out coffee. Now Justin’s account is nearly at 30,000 followers he wanted to take a look back at how far he has come. He researched a lot of coffee accounts before starting his and reinvented his account a few times. He is most passionate about his videos showing how his daily life with children and work intersects with coffee.
Justin is dedicated to teaching his followers about coffee in a casual way, not shying away from the fact that equipment can be confusing and brewing doesn’t always go how you planned it to. His main goal is to teach people that
“If there’s a couple of bumps along the way, that’s okay, it’s life”
and help them at the beginning to build a foundation so they can carry on learning. People ask him for help on certain things and he helps them, mostly by making a video or responding to DM’s. He is not as interested in complex brewing methods but aims to teach simple and repeatable coffee recipes.
Justin Piercy’s DaddyGotCoffee Instagram
Justin has been running his YouTube channel for a couple of months and like many others who are starting, is trying to balance making content whilst having a family and a full-time job. Justin told us “It’s been harder to keep the content coming out regularly than I thought” and it’s hard for him to get into a rhythm of weekly posting. Justin has started to overcome this challenge by figuring out his work-life balance and planning. He plans the main points of what people want to see and wants to answer questions rather than creating something very time-consuming. His channel now has 1250 subscribers and we are excited to see how he can inspire more people in the future.
We asked Justin about his plans for future content and his main goal is to interact more with his audience. He told us he would like to do ‘live brewing’ in which he directly interacts with his audience in real-time, whilst brewing. The fact that YouTube has the capability for longer videos means Justin can go into more detail which is something he is interested in. He told us “there is more to offer on YouTube” and even though Justin is still exploring with platforms, this is something he would like to explore in more depth. As Justin explained to us, reels and stories can get lost on Instagram since they are either 24 hours only or scrolled past easily. He told us that his YouTube is for educational purposes and his Instagram account is for reality-type content.
Justin Piercy has a big interest in digital marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) he told us “I’m a huge geek” and how he is quiet, reserved, and loves to read. This is how he manages to do so much research on coffee as he enjoys learning and then teaching others what he has learned. He does, however, face issues with competing for traffic and balancing content and life. He started with figuring out what people want and then building his content around that, rather than starting with what he wanted to do. He makes sure to research his followers’ questions on youtube to find other videos on the topic and stresses how important it is to tell people what you’re explaining in the first 30 seconds to keep them watching.
Due to Justin’s knowledge of both coffee and social media, we asked him for some tips he has for other people who want to start a similar journey. Social media and video creation have become insanely popular over the last few years so you need to work hard, Justin’s main tip is to post at least once a day as he posts 1-2 times a day, and any less causes a drop in engagement. He gave the example of posting 500 reels and only 10 of them perform well, that’s only 2% of your content that is helping you gain followers. One reel of Justins took him from 20,000 to 26,000 followers and as he described it, “choose consistency over perfection.” It was a hard pill for Justin to swallow that he can’t grow just by posting coffee photographs, as that is what he enjoyed but he said to do what you enjoy and be your authentic self.
Justin Piercy’s DaddyGotCoffee Youtube channel
We enjoyed talking to Justin Piercy from DaddyGotCoffee about his journey and we admire his dedication to helping others and being transparent about his daily life. You can find Justin on his Instagram or YouTube account, where you can keep up with him and learn some new skills!
Now you can listen to this podcast episode with Justin below, or you can listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google Podcasts. Want to meet more awesome coffee people from all over the world? Check here for more inspirational coffee stories.
[buzzsprout episode=’10449446′ player=’true’]
