If you are starting a brewery, read this book. If you are growing a gourmet food or beverage business of any kind, read this book. If you are a small business owner looking to survive and thrive among corporate giants, read this book. If you are at all interested in entrepreneurship and how businesses really start and grow, read this book. It is a manifesto for people who believe that quality, creativity, and personality can triumph over corporate blandness, media overkill, and the mindless drive for cheap.
In Brewing Up a Business, Sam Calagione chronicles his life starting and growing Dogfish Head Craft Brewery with his wife, Mariah. The unlikely success of Dogfish Head has been one of the great stories in craft brewing and Sam’s experience and unique perspective provide a fantastic classroom for the aspiring entrepreneur or business owner looking for a kindred spirit. The book is simultaneously insightful, inspirational, and entertaining. I found myself stopping to re-read and ponder passages throughout the book. Not because they were unclear, but because they were profound and got me rethinking my own “craft services” business and the day-to-day challenges of my clients.
As a business and entrepreneurship geek, I have read a lot of books on starting and growing businesses, from text books to how-to guides to biographies. And Brewing Up a Business stands out as one of my new favorites. While it would be tempting to see it as a book about breweries and the beer industry, it has much broader resonance than that. It is really the tale of a grass roots business and how it has rallied customers, employees, and its local and industry niches around the ideals of a high quality product tailored to a passionate niche. Sam refers to it as “alt-commerce”. I often refer to it as “distinctive business”. But the point is that it is a powerful way to grow great companies from the ground up or to redirect an existing business into a more unique and valuable relationship with its customers.
In addition to preaching the gospel of great, grassroots business, it also includes a lot of practical wisdom on innovation, customer service, marketing, social media, events, management, and even business finance that will be helpful to many business owners. The combination of anecdotes from Dogfish Head, stories of other businesses and institutions, great quotes from the likes of Emerson and Thoreau, and very personal insights on what it means to lead a growth business make the book varied and highly readable. Sam Calagione is as adept of a writer as he is an entrepreneur, not to mention just being a funny and fascinating character to follow through his business adventures.
There are a number of passages in the book that I plan to return to and I’m pretty sure it will become a favorite gift for my clients. I was really tempted to just start reading it again when I finished, but my reading stack is too high to afford that luxury right now. One passage that is stuck in my mind is the one that compared attorneys and other professional service providers to ticks that latch on and won’t let go sucking the life out of your business. Despite my profession, I agree with his comments that business owners need to be wary of service providers. I consider one of my challenges as an intellectual property and business attorney to be always adding value, never just sucking. (Admittedly, I think latching on is a good thing, since I provide the best value when I really get to know a business and work with the owners for a long time.) Obviously, I like Dogfish Head beer and the entire ethos of the company.
So, I suppose I was predisposed to like the book. Even so, every entrepreneur would stand to learn something from the Dogfish Head story and Sam’s business insight. It should be mandatory reading for anyone building a business in the alt-commerce or distinctive business arena.
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