Do you like our website?

We do too. The upside of Flow State Coffee being a coffee for creativity is working with creatives and being able to promote their work. 

The photography on this site was done by Aysia Marotta

The art over the photos was done by Andrew Yu

You should definitely hire them to do the same for your websites/products!

 

Holy fuck! 

 

FINALLY! 

 

We’re getting closer to the fireworks factory everyone!

 

 

The bags have ARRIVED at our manufacturer and are being fulfilled as we speak! I’m told 7-10 days from Monday is when the orders should be fulfilled and then sent out.

 

There is a good chance by the time you get our next two newsletters you are drinking some Flow State Coffee! 

 

I’m in the process of writing personal thank you letters and awaiting swag for referral winners. They’re going to come separately and I hope that’s ok. 

 

We had the option to have a fancy unboxing experience or geting you all the coffee two weeks earlier and we went with getting you the coffee earlier based on feedback. 

 

I want to thank everyone for their patience and support getting NooWave off the ground. My final ask for you (assuming you love it) would be twofold. 

 

1. If you can, could you try to get at least ONE (1) person to try Flow State Coffee? Our marketing strategy so far can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA7CKvoKEmE
2. Take a photo, video, tweet, tik tok dance or ANYTHING and tag us at @noowaveco or #flowstatecoffee 

 

We really, really, really need the content/testimonials  and bonus points if you can get creative with it! 

 

We’ve already had suggestions for Flow State Coffee paintings, workouts, playlists and more so I’m really pumped to share those with you all. 

 

If we’re going to be “Coffee for Creativity” then we really want you all to get creative with these posts so let’s see what you got! 

 

We’ll have rewards for everyone who shares and my partner and I are building software to display it beautifully on our website/socials. More on that in a few weeks. 

 

Thank you again from the bottom of my caffeinated (but with perfect blood pressure ;)) heart 

 

Now if you’ll excuse me I still have over 100 thank you letters to get to. 

 

-”It’s getting Real!”Greg

What this is:

I send a weekly email that you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't.

Since we keep getting more people who are out of the loop. This blog is a place where they can catch up on the wins and fails of creating Flow State Coffee and stay updated on pre-orders. 

Here is the 6th newsletter from 09/23 in its entirety: 

But first, coffee!

Hey Everyone, 

 

First and foremost I’d like to announce the winner of our Dream WFH Coffee Setup: Jaclyn Weber!

 

I’m so happy Jaclyn won as she’s a perfect example of someone who will benefit from Flow State Coffee. She’s an artist, dancer, yoga instructor and all around badass lady living in Colorado Springs. We’re already in talks to make a painting WITH some Flow State Coffee grounds. LITERALLY COFFEE FOR CREATIVITY!

 

As we await the forever process of the bags being printed and shipped to our manufacturer (17 more business days :/)  I figured it'd be a good time to fill everyone in on NooWave’s mission.

 

What Flow State Coffee is, what it’s NOT and who it’s for.

 

So first and foremost NooWave is a company and Flow State Coffee is one of our products. We will eventually have more. Now come closer...closer….little closer 

 

*leans in*

 

NooWave is NOT a coffee company!  

 

I know it’s confusing and I’m working on improving my writing and speaking around the company and the coffee to explain it better. 

 

NooWave makes products for optimal mental health. We want to help people feel better mentally so they can be creative and productive. I tend to think of us like Bodybuilding.com for your brain in 10 years. 

 

I know “Mental Health” is a touchy term so we may come up with a snazzier name as we grow and get feedback from our customers. 

 

I don’t believe that our products will cure clinical depression or help people with bipolar disorder. I do believe that if you’re practicing healthy habits already like getting good sleep, diet and exercise, some form of mindfulness etc, then our products can help you feel at least 10% better mentally. Should probably check with a lawyer about what I can and can’t say so let’s keep that between us for now. 

 

My goal is to have future products that include nootropics and supplements I use to make sleep teas, hangover proof alcohol, physical products like blue light glasses and maybe even an app that will disrupt therapy. I want to do all kinds of weird and fun stuff in the next decade.

 

But first, Coffee. 

 

So what is Flow State Coffee then? 

 

I’m seeing a lot of you explain it to friends and family which is AWESOME and you should definitely keep doing that but I think some people are unclear on exactly what this coffee is and does. 

 

So here’s how I would describe it as of 09/22/20: 

 

Flow State Coffee is coffee for creativity. 

 

It’s specialty grade ground coffee blended with L-theanine (pronounced l-thee-ah-neen) and Raw Cacao. 

 

It helps lower anxiety, boost mood and improve brain function (things like task switching and focus).

 

It’s meant to prime your brain for a ‘Flow State’ which is a fancy term for being ‘in the zone’. The perfect balance between creativity and productivity in my humble opinion. 

 

I’ll get into HOW we do that in the next few emails I send but hopefully this helps. 

 

We’re not some “avoid the dreaded crash” or “no jitters” brand. Though it does do though those things, I feel like it’s really played out and makes people skeptical. 

 

If you’re still confused it means I’m not doing a great job so please feel free to email me questions. Lots of you have and it’s helping me shape our copy and FAQ on the site. 

 

Oh and it (probably?) does NOT  increase your libido…. ;) (Thanks Jeff & HelloooTV)

 

Have a glorious Wednesday! Make Thursday and Friday fear your name. 

 

-Optimal Greg

What this is:

I send a weekly email that you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't.

Since we keep getting more people who are out of the loop. This blog is a place where they can catch up on the wins and fails of creating Flow State Coffee and stay updated on pre-orders. 

Here is the 5th newsletter from 09/16 in its entirety: 

"Yowie Wowie!" (IYKYK)

That was my reaction to our first week of pre-orders.



I still can’t believe the outpouring of support that came from you all. We got WAY MORE orders than expected!



We had a fun little snafu involving Viral Loops that I manually attempted to fix yesterday and accidentally emailed our entire list instead of people who preordered.

My bad.



If you don’t want a magic link that wins you prizes for friends and family who order Flow State Coffee let me know and I’ll remove you from the list.



On the flip side of that, lots of you DID refer people to us and that means a lot of you are new subscribers to this newsletter!



Lots of you I haven’t even met! Hello! I use lots of exclamation points!



I’ll be taking past newsletters and putting them on our blog so you can catch up on the journey so far. Just so you know this is our first run and pre-orders will be shipped as soon as we can make it happen.





You’re all probably asking “So when is that?”



Here’s where we’re at as of yesterday:



The biggest holdup right now is actually printing all the bags. They said it would take ~27 BUSINESS days (as of 7 business days ago) to ship to our coffee manufacturer. I guess even bag printers need to party on the weekend which is cool, but frustrating for all of us.



Our roasters are superheroes though and can reportedly make 2000 lbs of this stuff in a few hours so we’ll hopefully move fast once they have it.



There is a chance that you guys don’t get Flow State Coffee until late October/Early November and that would suck.



I’m doing everything I can to get it done early. I’ve emailed both parties and asked if we can expedite this in any way. I’ve offered my body but that’s not as appealing as I’m in my mid 30’s. Lot of miles on this car. Still, letting you know I will resort to any means necessary.



I’m in NYC now. It's so good to be back.


I'm quarantining and once I’m clear and bags arrive, I will run upstate to make sure the cacao process is done correctly, the coffee tastes great and (if we can) ship that day.



I’ll be spending my time writing you all nice letters and tightening up our website!



I’m also going to answer some FAQ in a weekly series for the next few weeks that will cover:



What Flow State Coffee is, what it’s NOT and who it’s for. (aka how to TL;DR this to your friends who are asking about it)

What is L-Theanine and why should everyone be putting it in their coffee.

Cacao vs Cocoa : benefits and why it's included in Flow State Coffee.

How to use Flow State Coffee to trigger a creative flow state. (this one may venture into cult/mission statement territory so be warned.)



I'll be updating other FAQ like Shipping and Affiliate partnerships as we go once we understand our costs better.



Thanks for being patient with me everyone!



If you've read this far, I have one more ask. Can you "engage" with this e-mail by replying and saying literally anything. It helps build the health of our domain so these don't get labeled as spam. Email marketing is hard :(



We'll have everybody creatively caffeinated ASAP!

-A very busy Greg

What this is:

I send a weekly email that you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't.

Since we keep getting more people who are out of the loop. This blog is a place where they can catch up on the wins and fails of creating Flow State Coffee and stay updated on pre-orders. 

Here is the first newsletter from 09/08 in its entirety: 

Tomorrow Is The Day!

Hello my patient friends,


This will be a long e-mail because we have LOTS to cover.


The day we’ve been waiting for is almost here! I’ve been in touch with manufacturers for both the bag and the coffee itself and I feel confident that we can get Flow State Coffee to you in the next 6 weeks! So...


Tomorrow we will be accepting pre-orders!


The bags are the hold up. Due to Covid-19 they said it could take between 14- 22 days!


That’s the bad news. The good news?


We’ve streamlined the coffee manufacturing process from 3 weeks to 7-10 DAYS by aligning ourselves with a new manufacturer based in upstate New York!


This is kind of a big update and I’ll elaborate in a future post but the TL;DR of why we switched from Seattle manufacturer to NYC manufacturer is:


The coffee was great but to be honest their sales rep and customer service was really shit.


I’ve been in sales my whole career and there are sadly more bad actors than good ones. I typically just shut up and deal with them while shaking my head and trying not to go all Boiler Room on them. But this rep was a special type of asshole. Everything was always someone else's fault. He would need two e-mails between following up. I was chasing him down to give him our money! Initially he actually got our formula wrong! So many red flags but I thought it was just normal for this type of business.


I was always in the process of looking for a new manufacturer anyway because I hated these folks and when I found these sweet NYC roasters it was love at first call. It confirmed what I always knew deep down in my heart.


NYC > Everyone. In your FACE James Altucher. Not even gonna link to your stupid ‘NYC is dead’ article. I’ll link to Matt Tilison’s thoughtful take of him vs Jerry Sienfeld though because Matt is awesome.


The most exciting part about these people is they LOVE coffee. They have way more options for roasts and they are really enjoyable and dependable to work with! So we’ll be able to have way more options down the line and get you coffee faster while still being artisanal roasted, ethically sourced and fucking delicious!



After sampling EIGHT different roasts for this first run, we’re going to switch from a Colombian to Rwandan coffee. It’s triple-washed Kivu Belt bursts with ripe apple and citrus anchored by layered notes of brown sugar and the sticky sweetness of caramel, honey and marmalade. It pairs SO well with the cacao flavor and is genuinely more enjoyable than the other coffee so this is a huge win/win for everyone except that shitty Seattle rep. But fuck him.


So one more time for the people in the back: Tomorrow we will be accepting pre-orders!


Let’s cover three things:


I will be going LIVE all day (or until I feel like stopping) on Twitter starting at 8:30AM EST for the launch. I have a friendly new public facing Twitter account: @SFWGreg.
We are giving away a DREAM WFH COFFEE SET UP (under $400 I’m not a millionaire FFS) to one lucky winner of launch week! I’m excited about this. I know lots of you are stuck at home and missing fancy office machines so let’s see if we can help you out! All you have to do to be eligible is pre-order and you’re automatically entered into the contest.
We are running an additional giveaway with cool Swag prizes for every person you get to try Flow State Coffee.
“I never win anything. Luck is for losers. I am the captain of my own destiny!” You scream into this email.

Ok I get that. So for those of you who are great at spreading the word and convincing your friends to buy things (Me. I’m that person. I convinced my friend to buy a buckwheat pillow after reading this article by Nate Kadlac) we’re doing a really cool contest with Viral Loops.

You’ll see the page and prizes after you order and you’ll have your very own special magic link so you can track how many people you’ve personally gotten to join our fun little coffee cult! There are prizes for 1, 3, 5 and 10 referrals.

Anyone who can get 10+ people to buy this coffee will belong to a special ‘founders’ club, get a very special prize I’m working on AND will live in infamy on our ‘about page, for ALL TIME. You could also just buy 10 bags if you’re rich and lazy :)

Ok so i’ll let you go because I’m super stressed and have a million things to do before tomorrow. I cannot WAIT to get this coffee made and into your hands.

From the bottom of my (perfectly balanced blood pressure due to the raw cacao in my Flow State Coffee) heart. THANK YOU to all of you who have gotten us this far.

Tomorrow it becomes REAL!



-A very nervous and anxious Greg

What this is:

I send a weekly email that you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't.

Since we keep getting more people who are out of the loop. This blog is a place where they can catch up on the wins and fails of creating Flow State Coffee and stay updated on pre-orders. 

Here is the first newsletter from 09/02 in its entirety: 

Baby's First Email Snafu!  

Good morning my Il-noo-manati, (No? Ok I’ll keep working on it.)



So apparently a lot of the emails I’ve been sending via ShopifyEmail have been going to your spam. You’ve all been missing my witty updates :/



Shoutout to my buddies Mike Wallace and Mark White for alerting me to the issues.



I’m sending this via Klaviyo so hopefully it resolves that issue. Can y’all reach out and let me know you’re getting these and maybe check your spam for the old ones?



In happier news, our bag design got approved!



Big shout out to Avery Vox who helped clean up the design and make it look great! Avery’s interested in freelancing for non-profits if anyone wants to reach out through LinkedIn.


The bag manufacturer is sending me some flat proofs to approve. They should arrive this week or early next week at the latest.



Once that’s done, they will be printed and shipped off to our coffee manufacturer for them to fill. I’m finalizing something big that will move the timeline up substantially.



Meaning it will hopefully be way less than three weeks to get them into your beautiful, yet subtly strong hands.



I saw this tweet by Robbie Crab and had a talk with a friend today that made me realize that things don’t need to be absolutely perfect to launch.



Like Fry above and many of you demand, I WILL shut up and take your money!



I’m committing to pre-orders next week!



Things have been going so smoothly I’m waiting for something to go wrong. I will discuss this with my therapist so as not to taint our budding digital relationship with my weird pessimism.



I really appreciate the kind words from all of you about my ‘writing style’ when really it’s just a lack thereof. Let me know if there’s anything more you’d like to hear about during this process and I’ll include it in these updates.



Ok. That’s it for me this week.



Just like in college I have procrastinated long enough and now I will cram for the next 168 hours and get a ‘C+ for this launch.



Some things never change :)



-Greg

What this is:

I send a weekly email that you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't.

Since we keep getting more people who are out of the loop. This blog is a place where they can catch up on the wins and fails of creating Flow State Coffee and stay updated on pre-orders. 

Here is the first newsletter from 08/26 in its entirety:

We’re picking up speed! 

Soon, my caffeinated friends....soon

Hey Everyone, (need a cool name for you all. Ideas?)

I received four different roasts last week and drank wayyyy too much coffee trying to decide which one balanced out the cacao flavor profile. 

I’ve settled on a nice medium Colombian for our first run. It was really hard to choose! I like all different types of coffee and I’m sure you all do too. Eventually if there’s enough interest we’ll offer light and dark roasts as well. 

One wrinkle we hit was our design needed to be tweaked by the company who prints the bags to fit the template they use. Today I will talk to a nice lawyer who will hopefully tell me that everything is kosher on the copy we’re using.

I’ll likely have to remove the part that states “Flow State Coffee will make you rich and attractive” but you and I will always know the truth. 

The manufacturer has told me from when they receive the bags, it will take them an additional three weeks to fill them with delicious and brain empowering coffee and ship to me. The final step will be me sending to you which will take around three-five days. 

If all goes well, you should be drinking Flow State Coffee in late September, early October. 

With that said, I feel comfortable announcing pre-orders once I get bags to the manufacturer so expect an announcement in a week or two on that. 

Right now I’m trying to get rewards in place for sharing. This should appeal to the lizard part of all your brains responsible for primitive survival instincts such as posting on Facebook and Emailing your coworkers.

Free stuff is cool for you and I can slowly start building a cult which is my real goal. Win/Win.

In related news, we’re working with Heads Up Screen Printing to design some rad shirts and other goodies for you to look awesome while you consume coffee. 

We’re also sponsoring HelloooTV concert series Season 2!

I love and miss live music more than most members of my immediate family so I’m pumped for what Paris and Erik are bringing to the world. I want to do more creative sponsorships and influencer things so if you’re interested reach out to me. 

That’s all from me this week. 

May your coffee be strong enough to endure the rest of 2020. 

-Greg

What this is:

I send a weekly email that you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't.

Since we keep getting more people who are out of the loop. This blog is a place where they can catch up on the wins and fails of creating Flow State Coffee and stay updated on pre-orders. 

Here is the first newsletter from 08/19 in its entirety:

"Holy Shit!"

*Me, reading all your supportive messages*

Last week I was overwhelmed by the HUNDREDS of messages from you all. I wrote a TL;DR when I shared my article because I honestly didn’t think that anyone would read what I wrote. 

But not only did you read it, you all replied. Like, really replied. Hard. 

Everyone expressed interest in the coffee which is cool but many of you wrote back genuinely kind words, shared some great memories and hit me with deep cut inside jokes. Some of you I haven’t seen in years!

It felt like a walk through my entire life. 

I replied to every one of you who wrote individually but damn, I’m a lucky guy.

You are all my ‘Day Ones’. ‘Day Zeros’ even? 

So, what's next?

Well, the most common question I got asked is some form of: 

“Yo, When can I actually buy this?!” 

The short answer is : “Soon.”

The longer answer is: “It depends on our manufacturing process, but likely sometime in the next two weeks to possibly as late as mid-September.”

I got final samples of different roasts this week (!) 

The coffee tasted great already but I wanted to nitpick. I just want to be sure we land on something that you all really enjoy and could stand on its own as a great cup of coffee, even without the added ingredients. 

Once we make the call, the manufacturer should give me a timeline of how long it will take to get into your hands and I can announce pre-orders without feeling weird about taking your money.

We’re going to come out the gates with a really cool contest and some swag though!

Don’t want to share anything yet until it’s finalized but I’m excited. Any guesses on prizes?

Ok that’s all from me. As promised, I’ll try to only email you when I have a relevant update or I happen upon a really good meme.

LFF (Let's F'n Flow!) -Greg