Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Entrepreneurship from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0470050454
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Entrepreneurial dreams do come true! Starting with nothing more than a home brewing kit, Sam Calagione founded Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and made it America's fastest growing independent beer. This unconventional business story reveals how Calagione found success by dreaming big, working hard, and thinking differently-and how you can do it too.
"Rarely is a book as good as a beer but this one is. It's written with humor, humility, and passion, essential ingredients for any entrepreneur."
-Bob Guccione Jr. founder of Spin magazine and Gear magazine
"Brewing Up a Business will inspire both entrepreneurs and aspiring small business people to have the confidence in following their dreams."
-Jim Davis Chairman and CEO of New Balance
"Sam Calagione embodies the spirit of a true Delaware entrepreneur. Starting out as the smallest brewery in the nation, Sam's ambition, acute business sense, and vision have allowed Dogfish Head Craft Brewery to successfully enter an extremely competitive market as Dogfish Head continues to leave an indelible mark on the beer industry."
-Ruth Ann Minner Governor of Delaware
"Everything you want to know about succeeding in business you can learn from beer. At least you can if it's the remarkable story of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. Brewing Up a Business is like a 'how-to' manual for entrepreneurs. With humor, creativity, and wisdom, Sam Calagione has crafted a new kind of business book that's as unique as his great beer!"
-Joe Calloway author of Becoming a Category of One and Indispensable
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LIKE THIS It was the end of the summer, early September 2002. I was scheduled to face another physically impossible workday. As our bottling crew loaded c03.qxd 3/28/05 12:07 PM Page 35 KEEPING YOUR BALANCE 35 our undersized delivery truck with pallets of beer, I stood at a worktable constructing tap handles. Most of the big breweries opt to order generic tap handles out of a catalog, but to be consistent with our off-centered motto, our brewery produces an off-centered tap handle. First a
step of the way. When I go to the distributors, I meet with the owner and talk about sales volume, product mix, and budget planning. But I also go down to the warehouse loading dock and talk c03.qxd 3/28/05 12:07 PM Page 48 48 BREWING UP A BUSINESS to the people who actually load the trucks. I ask how much of my beer is going out the door compared to other brands. I ask what styles of beers sell best in which neighborhoods. I ask a bunch of questions and I learn a lot. The beer industry is
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realize that what you learn from your failures will inform your next success. As a result of our own misfires we have even stumbled upon an innovative way to innovate at Dogfish Head. Innovate in pairs. It takes a lot of guts to try something new, and experience has taught me that if you are going to try something new you might as well try two things new at the same time. Dualism is the theory that there are two primal principles: mind and body, female and male, yin and yang, country and western.