{"id":1275,"date":"2013-10-22T06:50:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T11:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1275"},"modified":"2013-10-19T17:19:30","modified_gmt":"2013-10-19T22:19:30","slug":"im-a-beer-guy-and-beer-is-my-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1275","title":{"rendered":"I’m a beer guy, and beer is my passion……"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Culture\"<\/a>Last month I traveled to Austin to speak about the beer industry to a group of professionals who worked for one of the largest research firms in the US.\u00a0 In addition to my beer talk, the branch manager asked if I would also spend some time on\u00a0the importance of\u00a0having passion for one\u2019s industry.<\/p>\n

I delivered my talk at a craft beer bar close to the firm\u2019s office.\u00a0 As you can imagine, most of the time was spent on the beer industry in general, but these young professionals, average age 26, had many questions about the craft segment, too.\u00a0 The last part of my program was, in fact, concerning careers and opportunities and the employees had numerous questions about the industry.<\/p>\n

A recent article in the WSJ<\/em> written by Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon, Dilbert<\/em>, highlighted his thoughts on having goals and passion.\u00a0 In the article, Adams states that it is dangerous when successful people offer advice, especially when they say “follow your passion!”\u00a0 The author goes on to explain that it is easy to be passionate about something when things are working out, and that it distorts our impression of the importance of passion.\u00a0\u00a0 You may have high passion when starting a new business, but it could quickly fade if the business fails.\u00a0 When he was in banking, Scott’s boss, a 30 year veteran of the industry, told him to stay away from making loans to people who had a passion for a business.\u00a0 \u201cOne should only lend to those who have no passion for the business, but see it as simply a way to make a good living,\u201d the author\u2019s superior advised.\u00a0 Those who saw an industry as a way to make a living were named \u201cgrinders,\u201d and considered a good risk for the bank.\u00a0 Said the author, \u201cYou can bet on grinders, not the guy who loves his job.\u201d<\/p>\n

As General Manager of Coors of Kansas in the late 1970s’, Coors enjoyed a 60%+ share of market in the state except in the city of Hutchinson, were the Coors share was 44%.\u00a0 Hutchinson was the home of two small beer houses, Coors and Miller.\u00a0 The Miller owner, George, was very aggressive and had done a good job of getting share from Coors.\u00a0 We approached the Coors owner, Kenny, who decided to sell us his operation and move on.<\/p>\n

We purchased the operation and the first weekend after closing, we did a market blitz and acquired 17 new draft accounts in one day.\u00a0 These were the times when Coors did not split handles, so these accounts were exclusive to Coors.\u00a0 Within a month, we had Coors\u2019 share back into the mid 50%+ and growing.\u00a0 Not long after our purchase, and investment in Hutchinson, a hand full of Miller employees showed up on a Monday morning for work only to find the warehouse locked.\u00a0 George had decided he had enough, cleaned out the company\u2019s bank account and disappeared, leaving his Miller operation.\u00a0 Later, I found out he had resurfaced in California.\u00a0 The Miller operation in Wichita took over the Hutchinson territory, but by then Coors share was back to 60% in Hutch.<\/p>\n

In Scott Adams’s article he states that “his passion level moved with his success” and that “success caused passion more than passion caused success.”\u00a0 In my closing remarks for the talk at the Austin research firm, the final question asked was, “What was the best career decision I had made?” \u00a0For me, it was easy, my answer was that I got into the beer business, because unlike George, I’m a beer guy, and beer is my passion!<\/p>\n

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Last month I traveled to Austin to speak about the beer industry to a group of professionals who worked for one of the largest research firms in the US.\u00a0 In addition to my beer talk, the branch manager asked if I would also spend some time on\u00a0the importance of\u00a0having passion for one\u2019s industry. I delivered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-kz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1275"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1290,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions\/1290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}