Our Story

I’m Gregory C. Brown. Some of you know me as GC Brown. For those of you who don’t, I write novels, and I’m about to write you a story. It involves me and three other people: my partners.

“So, three guys walk into federal prison. You’ve got a Puerto Rican kid from the streets; a farm boy who’s slick with the lingo; and a doctor who owns his own plane.” Sounds like a killer opening scene…or the beginning of a very bad joke.

It’s neither. It’s us.

 

You’ve met me: husband & father of some brand-spanking-new twin boys, novelist, recent parolee. Now meet Alex Diaz and Dr. William McArthur III—he’s the guy with the plane (in case that wasn’t clear). I met him first.

Way back at the beginning of a two-hundred-and-fortymonth prison sentence. We were in solitary confinement together. “Doc” was in trouble for helping people on the “compound” who weren’t getting medical care.

I was in trouble for other things.

When I met Doc, I’d already been in the hole for more than a year. My accommodations were a 6x9 cement box with a steel door that never opened. At the time, I was also in the middle of exhausting my appeals. The hole was beginning to leave its marks.

One day, the guard opens the door and pushes a guy into my room.

Enter: Doc.

Right away, I knew Doc wasn’t a “lifer.” He made a mistake he’d pay for, then go home to never return. We hit it off almost immediately. We laughed and joked. Told some funny stories and some stories that weren’t so funny. We stretched coffee—ironic—from one week to the next. And we laughed some more. Doc is responsible for the chapter title “Fat Ellen” in my first crime novel, Taken by Storm.

A great guy who came in at just the right time in my life.

However, the relationship was short-lived.

Forty-eight days after meeting, we were put on a bus and sent to different prisons. We promised to stay in touch. Doc had two years left to go. It’d be more than a decade and half before I’d see home. I didn’t put much stock into hearing from Doc again.

I landed at another prison way out somewhere in the boonies of Ohio.

Enter: Alex.

If you ever get lucky enough to meet this guy, he’ll tell you all kinds of prison stories about me. Don’t believe him. It’s all lies, blown way out of proportion. But I will tell you one story to beat him to the punch. Alex was the “Homerun King.”

Before he got there, the title belonged to me.

I lost to him by like two or three runs…for a few years in a row.

I’ll hear about it ’til I’m dead. He’s so lucky I didn’t win.

Alex and I lived together for several years in a two-man cube. He got top bunk. He was never up there. We were usually on the floor dying laughin’. We’d stay up all night telling funny stories and talking about our failures and things we’d never do again. We talked about the “what-ifs” and the “let’s do’s.” Stayin’ in touch was part of the plan.

I still had a decade to go.

 True to their word, Doc and Alex went home and stayed in touch. We remained in contact all those years. When I needed something, they made sure I had it. We always talked about doing something down the line. 

 

Both were there when I got out.

Now, let me tell you about the guy who picked me up.

Enter: James “Jim” Farmer.

He’s the fourth and final partner. He’s never been to prison. Jim is also my li’l brother, Jimmy. Jimmy took care of me while I was inside. Never missed a beat. Jim and his wife, Marlene, opened their home to me when I was released. Told me to stay as long as I like.

Now around this time, coffee was not even on the map.

Jim was a long-time corporate VP of a public company and doin’ his thing. Doc had fought to get his medical license restored, was back doctoring, and we were talking about some real estate stuff. And over in another corner, Alex and I start taking about a variety of things to improve our every-changing a.m. health regimen…just because being healthy is better than not.

It was ginger for this, turmeric for that. Stand on one leg and swallow this. It was shilajit tar on the tongue, with a taste that lasted ’til dinner. Ashwagandha and a gallon of water to wash it down. And hold up—don’t forget the lion’s mane with a blast of dirty mushrooms exploding in your mouth.

We’d laugh about it every morning on the phone. But over time, Alex and I shifted over to the idea of starting a company together, and we started kicking around the idea of a “dropship” start-up. I wish I could say UpCup Koffee was our first idea. Sadly, it was not. Not even close.

Enter: UpCup Koffee.

In prison, I always talked about coming up with a health drink. When I got released, sixteen years later, the world had changed. Getting into that arena would’ve taken an arm— possibly two—and a leg.

I was no longer a betting man.

Back to the drawing board.

Alex and I stayed at it, trying to figure it out, still laughing at our morning ritual along the way. One day, I said something about buying a bag of this new health-craze mushroom coffee. And I did. It was the worst tasting thing I’ve ever had in my mouth, including prison food!

We laughed some more.

Then Alex said, “Hey, we should make a mushroom coffee and add stuff.”

A light bulb went off. “That’s It!”

The next morning, a freightliner left the building, screaming: “We gotta do this!” “Call So and So!” “We need Zoom!” “We need a logo!” “Who’s going to handle social media?” “Get me a meeting with the president!”

The gears were moving. I was watching it all unfold right in front of my eyes. How hard could it be, right? I mean, it’s mushrooms sprinkled with some coffee extract. It’s not even real coffee! And get this: People don’t expect it to taste good.

Now in my world inside my little head, we were going to be selling coffee in like two weeks. Here comes Alex…carrying a wrench. I hear him take a deep breath on the other end of the line. Here it comes, get ready to stop the presses.

“It needs to taste like a great cup of coffee,” he said. “Imagine we take all the best stuff from our morning ritual and add it to coffee, and we make it taste great?”

I didn’t have much faith.

I needed a doctor.

Doc picked up. I told him about everything under the sun Alex and I were taking in the morning. “We want to create a mushroom coffee and add some of these things. We need a doctor.” Turned out, he was zeroed in on what exactly to take: lions mane, shilajit, and NAD+.

But then he starts in with his wrench. It’s the same wrench Alex has. “It needs to taste like a good cup of coffee.”

How in the world are we going to pull this off?

Alex ran off and found a coffee expert and a chemist.

Fast-forward a few months: a box of 50 sample bags of UpCup Koffee showed up on Jim’s front porch. I carried it in. Opened it right there on the kitchen counter.

“What’s in the box?” Jim asked.

“My new coffee company.”

 

Looking back, he probably thought I was a little crazy.

I hadn’t really talked about the coffee yet. In their eyes, I was an ex-con aspiring novelist. In any event, two weeks later, Marlene and I were slammin’ three cups a day of the stuff— and talkin’ about it whenever we weren’t drinking it. Carla, my then fiancée now wife, was driving from California to Arizona to see me every five or six days. She began slammin’ UpCup Koffee too.

Probably has a cup in her hand as I type this.

Alex, who was livin’ way across the USA in Massachusetts with his fiancée, Morgan, were UpCupping it too. Down south in Mississippi, Doc and his wife, Sarah, had managed to get an entire diner full of patrons to try UpCup Koffee with their breakfast.

Everyone, everywhere, was raving.

My mobile was ringing off the hook!

I was locked in Jim and Marlene’s house on an ankle monitor. They had front-row seats to the hype. Jim knew immediately I’d crossed into an area where I might need some business advice. He offered to watch out for us. Look over any paperwork. And he was there for moral support.

We three ex-felons were trying to think of ways to raise the money we were going to need. And it was starting to look like a “go big or go home” situation, and I knew this was going to be a tough sale. People weren’t exactly beating down our doors to hand us money. And we couldn’t exactly beat down theirs, our release papers say as much.

I knew Jim had the money we needed.

I also knew he understood what we were getting ready to take on. The problem was, though Jim was secure in life, he was my little brother with a family to think about. Ultimately, I decided the risk was too big of an ask.

However, I still knew what UpCup Koffee was going to be.

I decided to just let Jim look behind the curtain. Let him be the judge for himself. He’d been an executive his whole career. He’d know what to look for. I CC’d him on every email. Added him to every Zoom. Every chat. Every meeting. I let him see it all—the nuts and bolts. Even the ugly.

A month later, that day came, and I was right. We needed money we couldn’t put our hands on. I sat down, trying to structure something that might appeal to Jim. I’d been on it for a few days.

Out of nowhere, on a Saturday in August, Jim drove the four-plus hours over from Arizona just to take me to lunch. I decided to give him the skinny, over iced teas, pizza, and Beyond Meat hot dogs.

After some business chitchat and a few laughs, he drove the four-plus hours home and sent his retirement back.

 

Within a month, we’d inked a deal with the largest distributor in North America, the #1 marketing agency for Amazon, a powerhouse Beverley Hills PR firm, and a don’t-take-nofor-an-answer sales outfit out of Tucson.

At the time this letter was crafted, we’re sixty days away from product launch.

UpCup Koffee: “More Life in Every Cup.” Let’s go!