Meet Austin Qualls of Ohio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Austin Qualls.

Hi Austin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It started on Packard Dr.

I was raised there by my mother and grandmother, my mother single and pregnant with my younger brother. Shortly after he was born, my grandmother passed tragically. We moved. What we had left was small but mighty: a support system held together by women who refused to let us fall through the cracks. But that loss was also the beginning of something complicated, and pivotal, for a young man who needed strong male leadership and didn’t have an obvious place to find it.

So I found it everywhere I could.

I was raised by men from all walks of life, for better and for worse, and every one of them left a fingerprint on who I became. My pops taught me work ethic and discipline, the kind that shows up as initiative, as the confidence to walk up to a stranger and introduce yourself like you belong in the room. My dad taught me to think, to question everything, to stay inquisitive, to pick up a book before I picked up an opinion. Other men taught me how to win by any means necessary. How to be tough. How to be gentle, somehow, in the same breath. Military bearing. Grit. How to physically build myself up in a weight room, and how to break myself down through metacognition, sitting with my own mind long enough to actually learn something from it.

I left for the military at 18. I was married and divorced by 21. I met my children’s mother and spent nearly a decade trying to figure out how to build the culture I could already see clearly in my head but couldn’t yet build with my hands. I opened a gym. I closed it. I went to jail – not because the world did something to me, but because I was emotionally burned out and didn’t have the discipline left to walk away when I should have. I’ve been on the news. I’ve been in the paper. Most people only ever get the headline version of a story like that.

Now I own a coffee company called Overnight Success because most people will never read the full story. They just get the highlight reel. The name is the whole point. Nothing about where I am now happened overnight. It happened in the wreckage and the rebuilding, in the gym I lost and the marriage I lost and the version of myself I had to lose before I could become someone steadier.

Alongside coffee, I’m developing housing for specialized populations, because the same instinct that made me want to build culture in a gym now wants to build shelter, literal shelter, for people the system tends to overlook. And I spend a lot of my time interviewing community leaders, creatives, and entrepreneurs on my podcast, *More Coffee, Please!*, because Akron is an asset to the Midwest, and our people are where we get our value from. Not the skyline. Not the headlines. The people who kept showing up for each other on streets like Packard Dr., long before anyone was watching.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As I shared, my upbringing was complicated, early exposure to more mature things, lack of stability, lack of financial stability ( I didn’t know this growing up). emotional trauma, too much grief that was never processed or acknowledged until it was pouring out of me, from suicides to broken homes I never had the language to express, all I had was feelings and my hands to fight through all the pressure.

Early on I relied on romantic relationships to see me through and that very crutch was the thing the crushed me. Intelligence without the ability to articulate it oftentimes become frustration. That was me.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a specialty coffee roaster. I roast small batch coffee beans for Overnight Success Coffee Co., and I’m building that into a wholesale business, selling roasted beans to bars, cafes, and other accounts, while keeping the same hands on quality standard I’d hold myself to roasting a single bag. Roasting is a craft. It rewards patience and punishes shortcuts, and that’s exactly why I do it. My bet is that you don’t have to sacrifice quality to grow. Most people assume that’s a tradeoff. I don’t.

I’m also a real estate developer. Through my company, L48 Group, I’m developing affordable housing in Akron for veterans and others in need.

And I host a podcast called More Coffee, Please!, where I interview community leaders, creatives, and entrepreneurs in and around Akron. It’s built on the belief that Akron is an asset to the Midwest, and that our people are where the real value comes from.

What I’m known for is the craft itself, and the consistency behind it. I show up the same way in the roastery as I do in a city council meeting or a sit down with a business owner. Present. Authentic. Unwilling to cut corners or code switch just because the room got bigger.

What I’m most proud of is that the craft survived me. I’ve built and lost things before. I’ve made mistakes loud enough to end up in the news. But the discipline I learned early, the kind that turns raw material into something worth drinking, worth living in, worth trusting, that’s still intact. That’s the real accomplishment.
What sets me apart is that God is in all of it, none of this is possible without acknowledging that fact. Even though I treat quality as a non negotiable, not a marketing claim. Even though a lot of people talk about craft. I’m roasting coffee, developing housing, and hosting conversations on the actual practice of it, at a scale most people assume forces you to choose between care and growth. I don’t think that choice is real. Do it with a pure heart, pray on it and work hard.

What were you like growing up?
Growing up, I was a dreamer. I always had big ideas and a strong sense that there was something bigger out there for me, even though I had no real blueprint for how to get there. I was naturally curious and liked learning by doing. If something interested me, I wanted to experience it firsthand rather than just hear about it.

I was active and outdoors whenever I could be. I played almost every sport I was exposed to and spent a lot of time riding bikes, exploring different parts of Akron, and hanging out with my cousins, who felt more like siblings than extended family. Some of my favorite memories are simply covering miles on a bike, talking about life, and enjoying the freedom of being a kid.

Personality wise, I was independent but social. I spent a lot of time in my own head, imagining possibilities and dreaming about the future, but I also loved being around people. I was competitive, especially through wrestling, which became a major part of my life after my mother talked me out of boxing when I was younger. That competitive spirit eventually followed me into the military and later back into boxing.

Looking back, I think the biggest thing about me was that I believed big things were possible before I knew how to make them happen. I didn’t have the roadmap, but I had the curiosity, imagination, and determination that would eventually help me build one.

Pricing:

• Coffee beans (retail): 3oz sample $10.00 · 12oz bag $27.99 · 2.5lb $64.99
• Coffee beans (wholesale): Tiered by monthly volume, from $13.99/lb at 10 to 20 lbs down to $11.99/lb at 100+ lbs per month
• More Coffee, Please! sponsorship (podcast): Pre-roll from $75/episode, mid-roll from $125/episode, full episode bundle from $200/episode, with monthly and season packages available
• More Coffee, Please! sponsorship (YouTube): Pre-roll from $100/episode, mid-roll from $150/episode, full episode bundle from $260/episode, with monthly and season packages available
• More Coffee, Please! sponsorship (bundle, YouTube + podcast): Single episode $400, monthly $1,400, season $3,800

Contact Info:

• Website: https://overnightsuccesscoffee.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/overnightsuccessco
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1CwDjQJjn5/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachqualls
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@overnightsuccesscoffeeco