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Jeff York  0:14 
Welcome to Creative distillation where we distill entrepreneurial research into actionable insights. My name is Jeff York, research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Leeds School of Business at the Â鶹ÊÓƵ. And I'm joined, as always by my co host,

Brad Werner  0:28 
Brad Warner. Jeff, it's really great to see you and I'm the faculty director for the Deming center at the Leeds School of Business. I'm really excited to be here today. It's

Jeff York  0:36 
a really very long title bread director. I mean, that's not at all

Brad Werner  0:39 
but if I had to say the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship

Jeff York  0:41 
at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder, right part of the CU system, all one, right? That's our motto, that is,

Brad Werner  0:50 
that is a hell of a title, isn't it? I mean, I guess I'm gonna have to back off and giving some of these papers just because of the crazy titles that they they throw around at the university. I

Jeff York  0:59 
will Okay, so we've only do this, but why don't you just list a few of the ventures you've been involved in starting like, and that will go on and on. So Brian completes out long titles. But then like Brad used to be a judge of entrepreneurship class before he worked at the university. And they Brad, talk to us about some of the ventures you started with just go on. And I was like, This guy's full of it. But then as I got to know, I realized he was not well, yes, sir full, but not on that regard. He is many, many, many things. So how are you doing, bro?

Brad Werner  1:25 
I'm doing, I'm doing great. I'm really happy to be here, my first time at Salinas brewing. So we're gonna talk to a awesome entrepreneur this morning or this afternoon, actually. Yeah. Starting to think about the holiday season. Yeah. And I woke up in a bad mood. And the first the way that I was going to actually focus my anger. This was on the day's paper. No, no, it's actually on my MBA students tomorrow morning. So I've been thinking about how to torture them a little bit. Take the snowflake crust off of the exterior.

Jeff York  1:51 
Oh, yeah. I'm interested as they seem to be snowflakes. There's a couple right? Pretty tough. Yeah. Well, that one woman knew more about breweries and I think I could ever know in my lifetime why Brett students like real 15 breweries. We should go. Yeah, that was impressive. Yeah, we knew her on and she could be like CO executive we give her co executive director of brewery integration. Distillation podcast. Yeah,

Brad Werner  2:17 
but my mood and actually though I'm looking in front of me with all the the unbelievable beer we get a taste today. It's actually making me cheer up a

Jeff York  2:23 
little. Yeah. pumpkin beer. It's now we've now past Halloween pumpkin beer season is sadly over. Yeah, you

Brad Werner  2:30 
gotta wait a whole year to hear me.

Jeff York  2:32 
I've got some for next year though. Bread I found a a Southern Tier makes a pumpkin Nitro Cold Brew coffee infused Imperial pumpkin ale and I got one of the last kids in Boulder. I'm saving it for nine

Brad Werner  2:45 
years. How does someone even think about something like that? Actually, we should bring Michael in to talk about that. So Jeff, our guest for today?

Jeff York  2:51 
Yeah, sure. Michael mesmeric is the co founder and CEO here at memes IC. O. Thank you. Sure. I will. Michael MEMS IK is the co founder and CEO. So neat is brewing company. That's it. 3550 frontier in Boulder, right by the railroad tracks. I have been here many, many times and like Brad, love this place been coming here really since it opened does just a wonderful place of the great atmosphere. Thanks for joining us, Michael.

Unknown Speaker  3:20 
Yeah, absolutely happy to be here. I always enjoy doing these things. And it's fun to engage with the university.

Jeff York  3:26 
Yeah, like we were talking to Mike, when we first got here. You're actually involved with the lead school a little bit, which is a first I think, but no, that's not true. We've had other people on the on the podcast that were involved with the school but nobody bringing beer. No, no, actually we have I won't go back. Or there are specific people that have given us beer on the podcast. Besides the beer you got okay. Yes. Perfect. But Michael, tell us your involvement with the school you do a bunch of diverse

Unknown Speaker  3:49 
Ah, yeah. So I'm an alum for one, which helps so I came not have leads. Okay. Oh, no, no, please.

Jeff York  3:56 
Let's go business class. I'm

Unknown Speaker  3:59 
not. I'm not an academic. I can talk to people but I'm not an academic. Welcome to the club. Yeah, yeah. waters warm, right. The the Yeah, I moved to Boulder to come to see you. Got here. 99 haven't left yet. Been in the beer industry since my senior year, really. And when was given the opportunity and kind of came into an ownership role? I found ways to engage back with CU, which has been I take a lot of pride in it. Yeah, I enjoy it so awesome. Most recently, we were buffs on tap, which is an alumni event right before homecoming. Â鶹ÊÓƵ two months ago, I did the startups and sandwiches.

Jeff York  4:47 
That's an ongoing thing we do at the entrepreneurship. So that make sense. Yep.

Unknown Speaker  4:51 
That was a great program. That was a fun thing. Engage with a couple of kids coming out of that too, which was kind of surprising. A couple that were asking for advice on their startups couple that were interested in working for us. So that's been fun. I work with a leads and MBA program right now. I'm Frederick Waverider. Den breeder. So I had last semester spring semester, I did a project with MBA student. And then hopefully we'll be doing another one for this spring. And then no bread snowflakes student, one of us snowflakes probably won't actually like I was I will say, if it survived tomorrow, Jack that was on his who I got last was a kid was smart. Yeah, I got a hell of a project out of him. Cool. So I was I was really impressed

Brad Werner  5:46 
when when awesome in a sense that when we have students that actually start to do outreach in the in the community, I would say that the first set of community members is that they're helping the university. But it actually turns out that our students add value, which is really, really cool to the businesses. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  6:00 
some of the programs that I've done have been good, because I get, I get kids asking questions that I'm not going to ask anymore, because I've got too much scar tissue. And so that is a really cool thing. And you get a perspective from 19 to 21. And I try not to do anything with kids under 21. But like, a 21 year old kid has a different perspective than I do. And there. The world can be anything. Sure. And so I do like that, even though some of those tools are less valuable. But Jack gave me a killer tool that I use. And I believe I will continue to use that. And I believe that another couple years from now, I'll pay him privately. I mean, he's done now. So I'll pay him in the private sector to update the tool to keep moving forward. So I'd love to hear that. Yeah, that's been been good. But yeah, I tried. When given opportunities to do things with CEU I tried to try to do fun. Yeah,

Jeff York  7:02 
I mean, it's it's a challenge. You know, in our MBA program, but but across to you, because hear me the sound so I'm sorry, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say, people come here they ghost you. They don't want to leave, like Yeah, usually don't want to leave boulder after they've been here for a while. And so then finding them jobs really depends on local businesses like yourselves, like helping us integrate them into the broader community.

Unknown Speaker  7:25 
So are you have to make the job like I didn't want to leave boulder. I got here in 99. I'm still here.

Jeff York  7:29 
But yeah, like for what drives being such entrepreneurship centers, like people are like, Well, I'm just gonna have to create something. And I see other people doing it, they realize they can. A couple

Brad Werner  7:39 
of things. First of all, Michael, you're living the dream of our students, right? I think come stay in Boulder and work in the beer industry. They're completely happy

Unknown Speaker  7:45 
as long as they don't care about money. That's right. That's right. Well, we can talk. The money

Brad Werner  7:49 
side is a whole different issue. And then the other thing is, though, is that the way that the dining center integrates with the local business community and vice versa, right, that we help each other out the collaboration that happens there? I think we add value to each other. And that's really amazing. And to see what comes out of those types of collaborations is pretty exciting. Yeah,

Jeff York  8:06 
very cool. So you guys, so how long have you been here?

Unknown Speaker  8:09 
We opened in 2013. Okay, we just had our eighth birthday here in this fall.

Jeff York  8:17 
So I remember when you opened and I remember coming here, because I know a brewery opens in Boulder. I usually go there. And you weren't selling cans at the time. I don't think where are you? Here we we

Unknown Speaker  8:29 
did have a couple of cans that we launched with about a month and a half, two months after opening. Oh, cool. But we only had two flavors at that point in time. Right? Until 2017 20 or through 2018. I think the most we did was five skews in cans. This year. We will can 31 beers.

Jeff York  8:54 
Okay. Next year. That's insane. So okay, so I am not incorrect in my impression that Sunita is has been on a pretty much growth tear as far as like, offering different varieties distributed, as well as in the tap room. I mean, it's just like, a lot of different different varieties of beer you guys offer

Unknown Speaker  9:13 
in Yeah, include the taproom has grown a lot too. Yeah. It was a six to eight SKU tap room for our first handful of years. And we've really shifted our focus to have a lot, a lot less volume have a lot more skews throughout the year, which is it's fun for us, right? It's fun for our brewers. And we're finding that it's it's also fun for a consumer and we have a few beers that we are running throughout the year. But we continue to limit that number. So that there's there is something new and that's kind of been one of the fun things and one of the very challenging components of craft beer over the last five to 10 years is really a shift from it. This is my staple beer that I always get to

Jeff York  10:03 
learn about a pale ale. Yeah, our beers every now and then we make something different but this is what we sell

Unknown Speaker  10:09 
correct to a every time the the real craft beer drinker goes in, they want something new every time.

Jeff York  10:16 
That's me I'm always exploring new flavors and styles and trying all sorts of different interesting beers. Whereas Brad's like, you know, wishing they all tastes like Miller Lite, trying to crush the craft.

Brad Werner  10:28 
As long as they don't taste like pumpkin beer. Actually, I'm pretty

Jeff York  10:31 
good now. Just give me all right.

Brad Werner  10:34 
So how, where do you distribute?

Unknown Speaker  10:35 
Where can people find you were distributed up and down the front range. Today, we are all the way through Fort Collins down to Colorado Springs. And then we do select deals kind of throughout the country and really throughout the world. So we'll do short, limited distribution deals with different distributors around. But really our volume is here on the front range.

Brad Werner  11:00 
Great, great. What I find interesting, though, is that some of your competitors that were big into distribution have actually closed their doors. Yeah. So tell me kind of your thinking and how you fit into the how you're placed within the industry.

Unknown Speaker  11:16 
So when we opened, both my partner and I came from Boulder beer, so large regional brewery, especially at that time period, before that I was with Oskar Blues. So we were building a business plan for another large production facility, we wanted to fill some eyes full of beer and spread it all over the country, right. And at the time, there were 1800 breweries in the United States. And we were like, this thing's flooded like this is where we got to be one of the last ones, like this is nuts, right. And now that we have 9000 breweries in the United States, the climate and the environment is different. So we had to, and this was really a major growing pain and something that I could say out loud, but didn't act appropriately. But we had to shift our philosophy from focusing on production first, and tap room second to tap room first and production second. So we always we continue to have success out of our tap room. And we would do deals all over the country that would go fine, or go really poorly. And it was like, Oh, thank God, we have the tap room, and we're making money. But now we got to go find another one of these deals are another one of those deals. So now we're to a place where we're really are focused on our Taproom locations, and then cascading that into a distribution footprint that can be supported. So we're close to starting construction on a location in the Denver Metro. And then we'll be looking at locations throughout the West is really our kind of long term goal. So we want to continue to distribute Kansas still focus for us. But we want that to be the cascade out of the tap rooms, not the other way around.

Jeff York  13:00 
Let's address that server flip business model on the way

Unknown Speaker  13:03 
it is. And it's because it's what we feel is happening right now. And the I mean, also to be honest, like the the margin at the source is not comparable. That's why like, they're not even in the same camp. That's like the two different business models, right. So people don't

Jeff York  13:19 
understand about the brewing business is like the taproom is so lucrative compared to like a can of beer you sell. I mean, we don't get anything for cannabis. Yeah, maybe like eventually. I mean, it's like, once the distributors eat up their portion and everybody else in the store. I mean, it's just, it's nothing

Brad Werner  13:34 
but brand identity. But the other thing though, with the tap room is you can actually talk to your customers and say, hey,

Jeff York  13:38 
well, what do you think and build a community by experiencing about this community? Yeah, I mean, this this, I think when you walk into cities, first of all, it's just super cool space, very welcoming, very light, brightly lit. Very open. And well, I've always loved I don't know how long it's been there. My memories always there's you have this community room. That's like a place where people can gather and I've never been here where people I've seen people do yoga in there. I've seen people in there playing board games, no Dungeons and Dragons yet, which is, you know, something what remedy at some point? I know. Everybody's just waiting for right. Then it's just a cool place to hang out. It's great.

Unknown Speaker  14:12 
Awesome. I appreciate that. It's a big focus bars. Community is um, you know, really, when it comes down to when you talk about like Simon Sinek talks about the why are wise about community? Yeah, like we are focused on community. Yeah,

Jeff York  14:24 
that's powerful. Well, let's take some of these beers. Yeah. Great. You're getting thirsty man. Yeah, try some. So tried most of them. today.

Unknown Speaker  14:32 
We have four beers here. In the center, we have bandido, which is our Mexican lager that is a year round beer for us. Then we have our passion fruit sour, which is also a year round beer for us. And this year, we had to year round sours, and then to seasonal sours. Sour has become a big part of our business. It's not a focus of mine personally, and we didn't strive to make that a big part of our business, but We've done it well, we've been lucky to receive some metals and some awards in this arena. And we don't have an extremely high price our a lot of the sour price point gets pretty high. And this is in line with, you know, IPAs, lagers and other beers. So this has done pretty well for us in the last few years. This is one of our cold kind of favorites is our black IPA. This is the first beer that we released. This has been in cans, this is now a seasonal beer. So we this came out in August ish. And then we'll run this through about March. Beer does well for us. For folks that don't know black IPA, it's a it's a style. Basically, you take a quarter of a light Porter stout, and you blend it with an IPA. So this isn't overly Hoppy, and it's not overly roasty. But there are some roast notes and some hop notes. And then kind of fun today, this came off the packaging line. So the cans in front of us are low fills. But this is explain that to me. So low fill means that this beer does not have enough volume in it to be legally sellable. So 12 ounces is our can we measure everything by weight? So my guess is these are about 11 and a half ounces. So slight low fill, there was a stall in the canning line. This is part of our process. But these are rejects throw aways and I figure yes, you're willing to drink Kelly? Yeah. rejects. Laughing like, yeah, so these this is our hazy IPA.

Jeff York  16:31 
Not been willing to drink? Yeah, we'll try anything.

Brad Werner  16:33 
Yeah. So

Unknown Speaker  16:34 
this is kind of a fun one. This is a new recipe for us. I haven't had this batch yet. But the word on the street is that it's drinking very well. Great. So

Brad Werner  16:42 
what is the shelf life of a craft beer in a can?

Unknown Speaker  16:44 
depends. It depends on style heavily. This hazy volume to I'm going to run this max at 120 days bandido that lager I would go 151 80 Something like that. The sour I'll give 12 months on? Okay.

Brad Werner  17:03 
And will you actually note that on the packaging? Drink buy?

Unknown Speaker  17:06 
We aren't doing drink buys we're doing canned on? Okay. So we're recommending things. But the in general, the best before is something that a couple of macro brewers are doing. But in general, the the craft brewers are doing the Born on dates more than the the expired date, because it's not going to expire, right? It's like slowly degrades. Yeah, it's slowly going to degrade. It's going to change. And there's certain beers where you want that to be part of the storyline. Where it like compared to milk like, Man, this milk expired like four months ago, it's probably fine. Sorry, probably not fine. Yeah. That's not the situation with a beer. It's just not going to give you that same, right.

Jeff York  17:58 
I just tasted about like,

Brad Werner  18:00 
I collect this line for a long time. And my son was really into beer. He went to beer school in Germany and all these types of things. And he had a few bottles on there that he actually kept in the wine cellar and age. Oh, yeah,

Jeff York  18:09 
sure. Yeah. Especially in Germany, they have like, the Doppel box. It was all age as long as you keep them cold. And another one too, I forgot was a big German beer. But usually like barley wines, you can lay down for a really long time. And then you can totally nerd out do a vertical tasting of them and things like that, which I don't do anymore, but used to do. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  18:29 
So here's this band, this kind of light. Yeah, warm up our palates a little bit or with a

Brad Werner  18:33 
band Ditto. Yeah. Nice.

Unknown Speaker  18:36 
So this is a beer. The taco cart that's out on our patio, is owned by McDevitt taco supply. Their owner Bradford's a good friend and the in summer, or I guess it was late winter of 2019 going into 2020 Before the shit really hit the fan. We were talking about doing a collab beer with them, they were going to put it on draft in their new restaurant. And he's like, I don't want to put tortillas in it. We're like, whatever we'll do. Batch. So we roasted some tortillas. And then this was one of our like, tours, things are hitting the fan. Cheers. And,

Jeff York  19:12 
oh, cheers. Oh man is gonna wave at you.

Unknown Speaker  19:16 
So we actually have roasted tortillas in here. This is actually turned into one of our better selling beers.

Jeff York  19:22 
So definitely get like the corny kind of pre prohibition Pilsner kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. It's really nice.

Unknown Speaker  19:27 
And that's where all the corns coming from. This is a very, very boring beer. It's intended to be a boring beer. But then that's kind of the it's actually the fun of it.

Brad Werner  19:36 
There's gonna be a session beer, right? Absolutely.

Jeff York  19:38 
Yeah, sure. But boring. beers are kind of harder to make in some ways, because if you got any flaw at all, it's just gonna jump out like whereas you make a massive IPA could have all sorts of problems underneath the hops, and most people won't notice. Absolutely. This is super clean. I like

Brad Werner  19:52 
the boring beer.

Jeff York  19:53 
I think sweet no bread. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  19:55 
I drink a lot of boring beer. Yeah, drink hoppy beer and I drink boy there right?

Jeff York  19:58 
I drink crazy. Beer I can find on a consistent basis. But I'd like boring beer to like all beer. So what do we try next?

Unknown Speaker  20:06 
Great, so this will move into a sour beer. Yeah, it's our passion. It's our

Jeff York  20:13 
Whoo. That's got some serious fruit nose.

Unknown Speaker  20:15 
Yep. So big, big passion fruit comes out with that big trouble. Oh, yeah.

Brad Werner  20:21 
I've never smelled a beer like that in my life.

Unknown Speaker  20:27 
So when we this is a kettle sour. We're brewing two types of sours here, we have long term barrel aged sours some of those beers. Well, those beers are aging in the barrel for somewhere between eight and 24 months. Those are small batch, we're putting that all in bottle or exclusive draft releases. And that really has to be curated and taken care of and it's a they're low volume exercises. This is our kettle sour. So this is all happening on the brew side. This is a little bit longer than brewing an IPA, but we're going to be able to go grain to glass on this in about three weeks. And then we're heavily fruiting these beers. So right now we have passion fruit, we have a prickly pear. We have a cranberry blackcurrant and then this summer we ran a raspberry, and then we're working on what the next sour is right now. But our focus and goal with these sours that we're canning is a subtle sourness. Yes, we do not want this to punch you in the face. We want this to have enough tartness to be refreshing, something that you can have a couple of during the summertime, almost all the beer that we make, we want you to be able to enjoy. I believe that there are breweries out there who want the beer to be the storyline. Maybe you have a party around a beer, where we want the community experience to be the first and foremost where the beer is highlighting your community experience. It's making what you're already doing better not trying to create the event around the beer. It's actually really

Brad Werner  22:00 
cool outlook. By the way, Jeff, you know how much I like sours, which is not very much, but I could drink this beer all day.

Jeff York  22:06 
There you go. So you've made a sour that Brad contrasts Great. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely it's got that sour tinge to it is totally approachable. Those like a Berliner vise, or lambic or something like that, or I'm sure many of your laid down sours are way more intense, too. Yes. Yeah, those those will fall for a really long time. So the goes down for years. Yep, all sorts of crazy first,

Unknown Speaker  22:26 
the Bear Lake sours that we have, it's the Duluth series. The reason we call it the delusion, we opened the weekend before the big boulder floods of 2013. The week of the flood, we inoculated the first four barrels, which basically means that we took a bunch of bacteria from other sour beers and like, I don't know, 612 different bottles, pouring it into barrels and just letting it see what happens. And we let that go for two years before we started using that next, and that is the original base of what we're doing here. So that original funk, so to speak, is still in this building. And we're still using it. So everything out of that is the dilute series. Yeah, that's really that is really cool. I agree. Those are there. They're very sour. Oh, yeah. Very

Jeff York  23:12 
used to like the drag for some Belgian beers and stuff like that. Yeah. This is great, though. This passion for it. So

Unknown Speaker  23:19 
the black IPA was what I gave you next, but crack your can of hazy and I should have grabbed an extra glass to have done this. This is fresh off the line. They finished packaging this probably two hours ago at most. Oh, so this is for us hazy Volume Two, this is our second primary line of this playing with different hops here where this is a playground bear galaxy. This one I believe is the label is correct, saying the talus and cetera. talus is a hop out of Australia that we're using quite a bit of these days.

Brad Werner  23:55 
So are we drinking in a way that we need two beers to drink at the same time? Is that what we're talking about here?

Unknown Speaker  23:59 
No. I held off on the black IPA. I

Brad Werner  24:03 
should have like, oh, we should go hazy first go.

Jeff York  24:06 
Oh, that's so good. Okay, now this one. I've had all these other beers. I've never had this AZ Yeah, this is really nice. New I like about this is it's got that hop resonance flavor on the back of the tongue that really sticks with you. Sorry, I almost call that heartburn. Yeah, but not like some of them like you were talking about. I thought that's why I was laughing. You said we actually want people to enjoy our beers. I really do think some people with the haze ease have gotten the point where the heartburn is like painful like this. And this gives you all that flavor that you look for in a hazy without that unpleasant stickiness in the back of your throat. Oh, the stickiness Okay, well, it's literally it's a burnings. I don't care if we had I don't want any beers people have given us on the air. But we've had we have had some hazy IPAs, I think on this show. I've certainly had my wife that you drink it and you're just like, kind of hurt. Like it's not that pleasant to drink.

Unknown Speaker  24:55 
I think that's one of the things that's challenging with the the hazy game is a lot of it has been how hoppy. How hazy how plus plus plus plus plus. And then it gets to like the nutmeg gang. Yeah. Where all of a sudden you're like little bit of nutmeg, a little bit of nutmeg. Wait too much? Nothing. Yeah.

Jeff York  25:13 
I've never experienced that in a poker beer ever. Yeah. No such thing as too much nutmeg. And yeah.

Unknown Speaker  25:18 
So it is it's a delicate balance. I have to admit, we've had some beers that have had a lot of that Sure. That component, that late heartburn piece, but this is super fresh. This is kind of I mean, it's fun. This is as good as this beer drinks. Well, this flavor change, though over Absolutely. Well, this beer of everything that we're drinking and everything that's in front of us, this is going to age the worst. So I think that we've got two to four weeks, hopefully, where it's going to taste this good. Probably not else that quit. And then we are going to start heading off the cliff a little bit. And that's part of this style. So that's another part of our intent is smaller batches of more varieties. And we're doing some of that even with our label coloring and things of that nature so that they're pulsing. So when our sales team is out in the market, it's like we know that that's old. Let's pull it immediately. But

Brad Werner  26:09 
if someone wants a fresh one, they can come right to the tasting room. Yes. Well, yeah. Spirits always fresh, fresh. Yeah, that's cool.

Jeff York  26:14 
Yeah, your IPAs, particularly the hazy is like a big degradations. You don't get that hot flavor. It'll hold on to the bitterness but not the hot flavor. Until it becomes this like, I mean, I don't know it just not. It's just not the same.

Brad Werner  26:27 
I'm in the mood to spend an afternoon in a Taproom. Jeff, you are Yeah, you're lucky because we're at a tap. Yeah. So you're perfect. Perfect. This is perfect. Yeah, this this way you think about this. You like this? Yeah. Which is out of character for me. I've liked all three.

Unknown Speaker  26:42 
Really? Okay. Yeah. Which is fine line between lucky and good. Yeah. Rather be lucky.

Jeff York  26:47 
Yeah, me too. Man. I've had I've been good at things way too many times. It still didn't work out.

Brad Werner  26:55 
So great. It sucks. I've

Jeff York  26:56 
blown things. Well, I thought that was great. Yeah. All right.

Brad Werner  27:00 
So now we're gonna go to number four

Unknown Speaker  27:02 
last beer. Here is our black IPA. As I mentioned, kind of hybridization of a porter stout and an IPA. Some people call this a Cascadian dark ale was supposedly invented out of the Pacific Northwest. This was a really sexy beer 2010 2014. Now there are not a lot of breweries that are making it. We're small enough. We're Nisha enough. We make a small enough amount of this that we've been able to hang on to it. And it's one of our better selling beer. Wow.

Jeff York  27:31 
You're the only people in Boulder I knew that. Make one of these.

Brad Werner  27:35 
So you mentioned though translate it was hot in 2010. Tell us kind of how beer trends flow. And maybe a prediction for 2022

Jeff York  27:43 
inch beer trends flow.

Unknown Speaker  27:46 
Yeah, it's your all week. For those of you listening. It's good. It's delicious.

Unknown Speaker  27:53 
So beer trends move very, very quickly. The one that I love to joke around about more than anything else is session IPA. In 2013 2014. We were brand new. I was trying to be company Superman. I was selling I was delivering. I was working behind the bar. Let's just

Brad Werner  28:12 
stop there for a second. That is the life of an entrepreneur. Yes. Right. I mean, you you wear every hat.

Unknown Speaker  28:17 
Yep. Yeah, a lot of hats. You know, like toilets plugged. Yep. Let's go to work. Go see your

Brad Werner  28:23 
banker? Yeah, hands first. Yeah, maybe usually. If it's convenient, right? Depends on the deal. Yeah, if you don't need any money, they're happy to give it to you. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  28:33 
So I remember going out and I'm trying to sell our beer. And, you know, I'm in love with what we're doing. And I'm very passionate and I telling the stories, yeah, to young people, like, I just need a session IPA from you like, can you please have a session IPA? And then

Brad Werner  28:48 
let's does that does that mean I just want to be able to sit at the bar all day and just kind of drink and watch football

Unknown Speaker  28:52 
essentially was a lower ABV IPA, some people would historically call that a pale ale,

Jeff York  28:57 
right? A bit of a paradox in and of itself as correct. Because IPA was originally designed by the British Empire to ship over to India during their colonialism. And so I mean, it's by definition, a fairly large beer, you know, at least 6% usually more or 678 percent even. So, the idea of a session IPA, in my humble opinion, means Hey, we're gonna take some ale, and we're gonna put way too much hops in it for how much malt is in it? And that's we're gonna call it maybe I'm doing I don't

Unknown Speaker  29:28 
know. I think you're you're aligned. Session IPA was the hottest thing in craft beer. Yeah. And within two years, it was gone. Not like kind of gone. I mean, it just fell off a cliff like you couldn't buy it. You could go into Hazel's one of the better selection liquor stores. Oh, it's incredible in the country. Yeah. And you couldn't find one. The point the reason I tell that story is they the trends go very, very quickly. There's a lot of flavor of the week type of thing within craft beer. IPA has continued to grow and is the strongest category within craft. Okay. sours had moments, craft loggers have had a lot of resurgence and are continuing to grow. We're seeing a lot of consumers out there who are interested in beer flavored beer. That is not something that was happening a handful years ago, we saw a lot of fruit IPA stuff we saw a lot of not, it doesn't really taste like beer. So we are seeing a correction back to beer flavored beer, which I personally love.

Brad Werner  30:38 
Can you capitalize on that, though, in a sense that you are the thought leader of beer and you introduce,

Unknown Speaker  30:42 
I'm not a thought leader? I'm just somebody who has an opinion.

Brad Werner  30:46 
I mean, how does it how do these trends work that I guess I'm really curious to understand your flavored

Jeff York  30:50 
beer is very traditional. There's like, the traditional beer styles are like, ancient I mean, right and like very old, very traditional. And I think when Microsoft beer flair beers, particularly lager, he's talking about the Germanic and the Eastern European styles like pilsners, lagers. You know, it's what it would evolved in America to be crap eventually, because that cheap agrees. But if we go and drink like a pilsner, we just go in any bar in the Czech Republic and we get a pilsner, it's gonna be absolutely phenomenal. Then we'll go the next one next door, and it'll be phenomenal. And they'll all have made their own and it's all great, but it tastes like beer. And for a long time,

Unknown Speaker  31:26 
I would argue that there's a lot of beer flavored beer, American trends as well. Like you mentioned searing about earlier, it's here Nevada is absolutely outstanding that a pale ale is to me one of the most important beers in the history of American craft really

Brad Werner  31:40 
stopped for beer Navis here. Why is that?

Unknown Speaker  31:44 
They changed how we use hops closed. Okay,

Jeff York  31:47 
they're the first ones to use like a hot profile in a way that gave that citrusy the smell used associate with one says here's a hoppy beer, you pick it up and smell it and taste it. Like okay, they were I mean, I think that's what really do. Right, Michael? I mean, yes. The first ones to have that citrus, orange grape fruity, and it's me now we get to drink Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. We'd barely be able to smell it next to like, love, love. I pray for drinking here.

Unknown Speaker  32:13 
I recommend every beer nerd to go out at least once a year, buy a six pack of Sierra Nevada. Yeah, have a moment with themself drink that six pack. And be reminded that like, this is important. There are very few brewers there's I love that actually very few brewers out there who especially people who have been in the industry 20 plus years, who don't have an absolute respect for that beer. It to me, it's been one of my island beers. I don't drink very much of it. I'll be honest. I bet I drink 20 of those beers a year and I drink frequently.

Brad Werner  32:46 
So I ended up in the industry. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  32:49 
But that is

Jeff York  32:51 
never drink other than on the bone. Yep. zactly Oh, and there's days when I you know, wake up?

Unknown Speaker  32:57 
Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So I think that that's an you know, they were in a very important component to that. However, going back to the beer flavored beer conversation, that is beer flavored beer. Yeah. That is not trying to hide the natural components that fallen beer. slushy beers is maybe a thing that's gone to the past. Maybe it's still here. It's it's still happening. Oh.

Brad Werner  33:23 
Realize that?

Unknown Speaker  33:24 
Yes, a slushy beer is going to be extremely fruity, milk shaky and check IPA, all these flavors, you can literally try some of these beers, and you're gonna start to taste like pies.

Jeff York  33:36 
Yep. And that's a good sign.

Unknown Speaker  33:38 
It really isn't a thing that it is incredible. They make that brewers have been able to do that and do that. Well. It's not something that I personally love. It's not something that we have gone into. I'm not going to say that the Brewers doing that or bad brewers because being able to do some of that, you gotta

Jeff York  33:55 
push the envelope. Right. You know, it's, it's amazingly difficult to make those beers and make them actually,

Brad Werner  33:59 
I will tell you, one of my favorite beers. Sorry, Michael. It's not the neatest but coming from Chicago is Gumball head. I think it's really just kind of, he opened it up. It kind of blows your mind a little bit. But I want to get off of that. Yeah. By the way for beers in a row. I've liked all four of them. Jeff, actually, my favorite is number four

Jeff York  34:18 
knows when we're really tricky Chicago like cuz you just need to get to Chicago and drink beers. But anyway, that's easy. We'll have to drink every beer in Boulder first and that's gonna take a while. So yeah, I hear you. I mean, like, I'm a big milkshake IPA fan, but I'm just as much a fan of your of your Mexican water. I mean, I really try to appreciate all beers for what they are. And I really do honestly, like these pumpkin beers. Now. Do I want to just drink pumpkin beer? No, hell no, that's ever round, unless you're around, in which case, it's just fun. But um, but actually for the month of October. I try to drink as many of them as I can. And then I just I like drinking beer seasonally. I think beer is something that offers so much variety and so many different interpretations that you can kind of change your beer drink You know, I

Brad Werner  35:00 
have a question for you, Jeff. So you bet up your judge our, our listeners know that you you really do love. You're

Jeff York  35:05 
kind of a big deal, but I don't know about that.

Brad Werner  35:09 
In your own mind. Yeah. But But But what I'd ask you though is when you think of sneakiness What do you think of as a beer kind of sore

Jeff York  35:15 
community? Actually, I think of like the good times I've had sitting on their porch with friends and and the thing that comes to my mind was the neatest is, I don't know if you guys still do this. I'm not putting a bad spot. The train beer absolutely still trained beer. So awesome. You want to tell them about like, yeah, so

Unknown Speaker  35:31 
the way this came about was, we're looking at real estate, before we're even open. And we step out onto what is now our back patio, we really did lease a turd of a building, and we had to put like layers and layers and layers. But the we're standing out back with our landlords and the train is going by, and the train is about 150 200 feet from like the back door. And it's also underwater at the time. So like, there's ducks out where is now a fire pit. And there's a train going by. And they're like, you'll just have to do something creative to like, celebrate the trade and cuttings. And it was like one, we're gonna have to put like, many, many dollars into this patio, which we've obviously done, but it was coming out of it were like, I forget who in the conversation, it was not me and I correction, it was definitely me. Somebody who was like you should just have like a train beer and give away free beer when the train goes by. It's like, well, that's not a good business plan. But every time the train goes by, we do $2.50 on full pours of the train beer and there's a dedicated beer. Usually, it's something lighter. Oftentimes, it's an experimental beer that we do on a low ABV route where a new hop that we're not sure of, or a new yeast that we want to try out and play with. And then the train beer is on. So for the 15 minutes after the train, you know, we sell beers for $2.50. And it's just a way to try and celebrate something that is honestly incredibly annoying. out there. Like if a long train is coming by and we were doing this activity for example, and we've been outside we just get to stop and wait.

Jeff York  37:26 
Oh, it's it's loud. It's rockin Wait, it's super cool. I've actually been out there where a lot of regulars are like come on Saturday, so they actually a cheer goes up when the train goes. They rush into the bar. It's super cool. Yeah, I always think of you guys to Sun is the beer I think of actually the seats on Yes. Yeah. So that's the beer of theirs I've had probably drinking the most is why Yeah, go to when I come here. It's really nice. Similar to the other beers we're having day. You know, it's the sun. It's not like the most approachable style. If it's like a true like farmhouse Assan. from Belgium. It's like super horse blanket is the characteristic which is not necessarily commercially appeal.

Brad Werner  38:01 
So why would you drink a horse blanket

Unknown Speaker  38:06 
beer because it's good. It's fantastic. Why do you drink? Why do you eat stinky cheese? Yeah, exactly.

Unknown Speaker  38:12 
Okay, well, there you go. Yeah.

Jeff York  38:15 
Yeah, well, you don't drink super smoky scotch. No, you know, like the frogs and those things now. So it's extreme flavor. But what I was gonna say similar to the styles we're tasting here. And as Michael's been describing, there's the sounds totally approachable. Like, you know, you could sit down and drink again idea of the style. It is definitely dead on to style. But it's not like the extreme version of the style. It's all in your face. I love your description of making the beer, not the the main event. Like your beer is not like say, a crazy blueberry milkshake IPA with a graham cracker crust, that beer exists. Seriously. It's like just a beer. We're gonna drink. You know. So I buy it every time. So yeah. But no, I love Sidious beer. And I mean really is a community thing. I think it's really cool to meet you, Michael and learn how intentional that is. I think it really does differentiate.

Brad Werner  39:00 
Yeah, I have one more question for Michael before before we move on. Tell us about COVID your business and the community through the last two years.

Unknown Speaker  39:09 
Great question. COVID has been hard and seen now. We're still here. You know, the that was one of the biggest roller coasters of my professional life. But it's been one of the best times of my entire life. I thrive on adrenaline, when that has hit the fan not is going to hit the fan or might hit the fan. I performed the best. So, you know, we get the message that we're shutting down from Governor. And we're not surprised. Two weeks prior we would have been surprised but by now it's like okay, yep. SAP has hit the fan. We hear the shutdown. We are a seasonal business. We're not a huge company. We don't have tons of cash reserves. And what happens for us all Summer is our best time, you know, you speak about the patio, the train beer all. So we build up our reservoirs through the summer, and then we burn it through the winter, we enter spring, lean and mean. And then we build back up and we go again. And, you know, there's good times and bad times within that. But like that is the reality of our business. So, when March, we're already lean and mean, we've got tanks that are full, we've spent everything. And it's like, you're all done with your tap room. You guys are. So like, okay to call bankruptcy lawyers. Yeah, right. We're, I'm all done now. Like, I'm just going to be all done. There's no one I can call here. And so I learned a lot, that was a huge blessing. And then a lot of the government assistance starts getting rumored. And then it starts happening. And we were very aggressive, extremely aggressive. And if there was a rumor that somebody heard on some news source of some funding plan, I was on it like a fat kid on cake. And we were very fortunate that, but that's what it was meant for. That's what. So we have seen support through that which allowed us to survive, I've had to lay off almost the entire staff twice, which is, it's brutal, really hard to do. I don't recommend it for anyone out there. But we have really thrived through this. And now that we're kind of through the back half of 2021 has has been our best year ever. So we have just completed four consecutive months of our best month ever. And we're growing, we're in a strong situation where we can continue to grow and new opportunities are coming to us because of it. So overall, you know, 10,000 foot view COVID has been good to us. And it's been good to me. I'm immune compromised. I shut everything down. But we've done pretty well through it. So it's a weird,

Brad Werner  42:11 
but think about the balance, right? The balance of businesses depend on their community, that for sure. It also depends on businesses, right for the sanity. I mean, I think he just actually ran through, right, understanding your customers working with them, embracing them, but I think that you might be on that with more stakeholders overall. So I mean, we're all involved in these local businesses. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  42:33 
we were fortunate to have a huge outdoor space and when outdoor dining and gatherings started to a open but be become a little bit more comfortable and acceptable. That was an area that we were able to expand, we were able to offer something to the town where a lot of other people couldn't. And there's a lot of great entrepreneurs and business owners out there that just didn't have the dirt that we have. Right. So that was an area where we were not planning for COVID. Our crystal ball did not have that. Nope. Yeah. But we were able to do well in it because we were able to provide a comfortable, safe place. Yeah, it's

Jeff York  43:16 
all about taking your resources and reallocating them and leaning into them when you need that. That's the thing. You need to be open to change, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Is and like we I mean, but I mean, like I said this, honestly, it was the first brewery I came to baseball, we're still opposed to it. But you know, the first beer I went to was, was it the draw of the outside patio? Absolutely. I was like we're working. I go and feel relatively safe being outside. I mean, there might be a crowd, that's a big patio B play space. And sure enough, it was and they just, I mean, it's just also a place that I've just had so many good memories associated with of meeting with people here and just being outside and enjoying the backyard and the train beer and everything else. Yeah. So and the other thing that I think was important and what Michael said, I think oftentimes we have like entrepreneurship narratives and business narratives where we kind of have this anti government stance. And, yeah, you know, the government's not efficient by most businesses standards, but they do tend to mean we'll see most of that. Okay, sometimes. And I think COVID is a clear example of that in Colorado, at least from my perception, and I love the fact you were able to lean into that and get some help and actually utilize those resources.

Unknown Speaker  44:20 
I think one of the things that was really interesting, and what was shocking to me, in hindsight of everything that's happened is that, as a society, we really did give it about small business through COVID. When we look back at some of the major recessions over the last 20 to 50 years or some of the downturns or some of the shifts, we've always always focused on big business. Big business is going to save us they're going to get us across the finish line. And exactly, and this was one of the first opportunities that I'm aware of where we really said the federal government and state government but the federal government said, we give about small business, and we're going to put our money where our mouth is. And it's two different parties, and two different leaders that did that. And like you like both you hate both you can't like and hate both. Gotta pick aside, right. But like, regardless of your political affiliation, there has been this support for small business, which has allowed small business to really stand itself up and, and survive something. And I think it's cool. I think it's impressive. I feel bad for the small business entrepreneurs that were afraid to take it. Yeah. Because I've talked to friends who own small, their own businesses, like, I'm not taking it, I'm not taking any of it, because they're gonna come for it, right, just like they always do. And it's like, Man, this is what keeps the doors open. This is what the top 10 businesses have been doing forever. Here's to that.

Brad Werner  45:53 
But I also, I think, Jeff, that's a great segue into what we do at the Center for Entrepreneurship. Right. I think that the government and I think that people are starting to understand that small business drives our academy, that they employ the most people, they create the most wealth, and they actually small businesses, the best way to move out of poverty. So I think that all of those things, that's what we've dedicated our life to effectuating right. And I think this is a great example. Yeah, you're here.

Jeff York  46:19 
My clothes been just wonderful talk. Absolutely. I mean, I've been a huge fan of your business forever. Appreciate that. But getting to meet you makes me even bigger fan. So Michael Mims is the co founder and CEO of Sydney is Brewing Company located at 3550 front here in beautiful Boulder, Colorado right by the train tracks, which is actually a good thing. If you come here. It's awesome. You can find them at syneos brewing calm, Michael, thank you for joining us. This has just been great. And the beers are fantastic. I really appreciate it.

Brad Werner  46:46 
I'm definitely coming for a train day.

Jeff York  46:48 
Every train day,

Unknown Speaker  46:49 
right? Yeah. Good luck booking that one. They're pretty protective of that information.

Jeff York  46:57 
Be on the porch on Saturday afternoon is my advice. Okay. Yeah, I can do that too. Well run my Dungeons and Dragons game. I'm sure you'll be there. Yeah. Yeah. Mike, yeah. All right. So Brad, I mean, this is cool. Like this is one of the few times that we have sampled like all the beers a breweries offers. you've liked them all.

Brad Werner  47:20 
You know what, it's actually amazing. Maybe I'm starting to like beer more. Yeah, if you're out there,

Jeff York  47:23 
and you're looking for an actionable insight. The one is anyone can chain better if Brad can learn to like beer better. There's hope for anyone. Yeah, yeah. But these these are, these are great beers truthfully, and it's really cool to see someone who you know, I mean, here we are. We're sponsored by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Leeds School. And it's really cool to be talking to someone who's actually a stakeholder, you know, I think about someone who's a stakeholder in endeavor is do they put skin in the game? Like we all say, Oh, I'm a stakeholder and this and that, and do you give your time, money, effort, reputation capital, do you give and Michael clearly,

Brad Werner  47:58 
but it's also payback for him as well. Right? Yes, both ways.

Jeff York  48:02 
And that's the beauty of a beauty of a steak.

Brad Werner  48:04 
Right. And the other thing that I learned from today, Jeff, is I think that the right amount of beer to have before talking about a paper is for beers, for

Jeff York  48:11 
beers is to be clear. For our listeners, we did not sit here and drink for like 16 hours or even 12 ounce beers.

Brad Werner  48:18 
We sampled what else things called growlers, right? Yeah.

Jeff York  48:22 
Yeah, we did like Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we better talk about paper. So bread. Yes. Riddle me this Batman. Do you think autonomy is important for entrepreneurship?

Brad Werner  48:33 
I think that that's a loaded question. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. So I'd like to actually do this in reverse. Let's talk about the way that entrepreneurial organizations are normally formed. And let's see if we can fit this paper into that. Okay.

Jeff York  48:47 
Yeah, I'm sorry, I after four beers, you just blew my mind. So I'm like trying to put my brain back in order. But let me let me introduce the paper. So first of all, paper we're going to talk about this podcast is a forthcoming paper and organization science. It is by Victoria boss, Linus Salander. And forgive me if I'm missing up names, I apologize Christoph owl and Raj Jarman. They are at the Institute of entrepreneurship at Hamburg University of Technology. E. s. T, Berlin, University of Toronto, respectively. So we have a bunch of co authors, international group here. And the name of the paper is organizing entrepreneurial teams a field experiment on autonomy over choosing teams and ideas. Okay, so I picked this paper, I very, very, very, very, very seldom see papers that a touch on very direct questions to an entrepreneur, like is autonomy good or bad right. Now, to be fair to these authors, they're sort of couched in his paper in the idea of like, intrapreneurship, I'd say. So organizing for entrepreneurial endeavors within an existing company, not necessarily startups, but I think there are lessons here for sure. And here's why I really liked about this paper. I thought it was interesting for our podcast, it's all about innovation. pyramid done on a bunch of entrepreneurship students right now Brad and I are constantly teaching entrepreneurship students, I thought this would be good fodder for us to talk about. It's an interesting paper, it's a different paper. And now I will let bread take us down those rabbit holes.

Brad Werner  50:13 
So a couple things. First of all, we're always looking for takeaways to help the entrepreneur on the ground, how can we provide value for them? When I think about, they take approximately 900 students in Lean Startup entrepreneurship courses? That's crap. I don't even know what that means, right? Because I mean, yes, they're taking an entrepreneurship course. Are they forced to take this? Are they poetry people? Are they actually thinking about? Are they thinking about starting a business? Not the poetry people?

Jeff York  50:39 
Questions about the sample? Okay.

Brad Werner  50:40 
So the sample does concern me on looking for actual insights into helping, okay, entrepreneur.

Jeff York  50:46 
So what you're touching on is a ongoing research question and dynamic of, if we do an experiment, in this case, a field experiment where we take a bunch of students, we put them through a various scenario, and by definition experiment is going to have a control on the treatment, yes, and this classic two by two matrix, where they're going to have different levels of autonomy. So just let's up the paper real quick for again, thank you. Okay, so it's a two by two field experiment, what they did is they took these 900 and some odd entrepreneurship students, and they gave them different treatments. In one group, they let them choose the idea they would work on. So they presented a whole bunch of ideas. I think that part's pretty interesting to like, so we'll talk about that a little bit. They presented a bunch of ideas, and they said, the student teams, right, you can choose your idea, but you're going to be assigned a team to work with. So in that treatment, the idea is autonomous, the team is assigned, okay? Next treatment would be okay, we're going to assign you an idea to work on but you can choose the teams that you will work with, that's the second treatment, okay. And then the control is, we're going to assign you both the idea and the team members. So this is sort of the given state that these researchers are saying is sort of the control group, which makes sense to me. And in Germany, they probably do often have entrepreneurship classes where you're assigned an idea you're assigned to a team. I personally have never run entrepreneurship class where I signed ideas, or team, which puts me in the group number four, which is total autonomy, chaos, the American way, right? Everybody, you know, self organize.

Brad Werner  52:17 
So maybe this is the European model a little bit, right?

Jeff York  52:20 
I mean, it could be reflected in the author's background a little bit, I don't know. But just but it's an interesting experiment. And you can't do that in the real world. Because no, we can't go into some business accelerator, okay, we're gonna go down to Tech Stars, you're gonna say, okay, Tech Stars, we're gonna take a quarter of your people, and we're gonna take away their idea and say, Nope, you're gonna work on this. And also, by the way, we're gonna assign the people you are, it's just, it's however, you can't do it.

Brad Werner  52:43 
Let me let me let me actually introduce something else. Okay. I don't know if you're familiar with startup Studios, where startup studios actually define a problem, and then look for entrepreneurs to solve that problem. So okay, cool, right. Yeah, no, that's totally cool. But I would say that the typical American entrepreneur, yeah, right is group number one. They've looked for an idea. Okay. Land on idea, right. And then they look for partners, they build their own teams. Yeah. But I

Jeff York  53:08 
mean, that wouldn't actually be great. That'd be group number four. Yeah, like, but even group number four here is not, they're getting to choose amongst at least my understanding of the paper. And there's a pretty lengthy online appendix to this paper, too. It's very detailed, very well executed. And that's why it's an organization science, which, you know, we can debate back and forth about, you know, how applicable is this Rajmahal insights. But make no mistake, this is a well executed study, very interesting, very creative way to take the entrepreneurship classroom and do something and try to, and I mean, the thing I like about this, they're actually trying to say something useful. This is not a theoretical study. No, this study is about like, Hey, if you're an Amazon or whatever your your I hate, your suneet is brewing and you want to create more innovation? Is it better to take your employees and give them a specific project specific team and say, go do that? Or is it better to say, here's a team of people go figure out a project guys? Or is it better to say, here's the project, go see if you can get Joe and Kenny and Jin over at the bar to work with you? Or is it better just to say, Hey, guys, you know, we're just gonna like, here's a bunch of things we think we should work on. Here's five ideas, somebody do something about it. I mean, that's an interesting business, maybe not for an entrepreneur, but I think it's interesting. But actually, it could be interesting for an entrepreneur that's trying to create more innovation. And I think it's interesting from people that run an accelerator or an incubator. And I think it's an interesting question for educators. You know, entrepreneurial insights are not just about trying to help entrepreneurs on creative distillation brought to you by The Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and lead School of Business, but also could be actionable insights for educators, investors, literally anyone but nerdy academic.

Brad Werner  54:43 
And the other thing is you run into lots of entrepreneurs that are not the idea person. Absolutely. And they know it's interesting and that Yeah, right. They their self awareness is in there. I'm not sure you have people all the time. Hey, Jeff, I'd love to work with a startup I could help them execute. Oh my god, but I don't Know what to work

Jeff York  55:00 
on. Okay, what I think Reason number four to match the number of beers we tasted, that I was excited about this paper is right now I'm in the process of forming the new venture launch class, which I know you're familiar with. But just for our listeners, new venture launch is a really interesting class because we give out actual money we destroy about 30k in funding over the course of the team is sponsored by the intuitive Foundation, which is the foundation focused on bringing together technologists and business people together to solve important problems. So the class is structured in such a way that you can get admitted by applying with your idea. For example, I know we're going to accept one that went through our lab Venture Challenge on campus, they have patented technology, they're pending FDA approval, they have patents, right by all definitions. That's something that's more actionable than Brad and Jeff's raspberry wheat beer idea that we came up with. That would be Jeff's just right. Yeah. Brad's like yo, German Pilsner. Yeah, I mean, what I mean is there's something real there. But then we put people together. Correct. But here's the trick. I let them all self select. I don't assign anybody to anything. And I'm certainly not coming up with the ideas. The people are correct. And what's interesting here is I'm wondering, well, maybe I should be assigning teams? I don't know.

Brad Werner  56:07 
I don't know. But but here's the other scenario. The other scenario is we have entrepreneurs come up to us all the time and say, I'd love to make a difference. And I want to do something in climate change. Right? Right. So you have this huge, worldwide challenge,

Jeff York  56:23 
and clearly gonna be solved by government agreement in the wake of cop 26. All right.

Brad Werner  56:27 
So think about this. So if you're an entrepreneur, and you want to actually make a difference in climate change, how do you even break that problems out?

Jeff York  56:34 
Yeah, well, I think you got to start thinking about I mean, you're gonna need expert guidance, right? So in that way, there is kind of a set of solutions, a set of ideas,

Brad Werner  56:45 
right. But I would say very high level ideas, and then breaking down components of those, right? You can't just go into the room and say, I'm going to create a company, and I'm going to solve climate change, right? There are too many different moving parts to that

Jeff York  56:57 
can but it's like, well, it's not gonna go very well. Probably. Right. Okay. So here's what's here's the actual insights from this paper. I think that's interesting. So, okay, I was gonna do this as a little bit of a quiz, because this will be fine. Although I know Brad's read the papers. That's not gonna. So better. Okay. So we got two types of autonomy go on, you got to kind of hold a two by two matrix in your head, right? They've got two types of autonomy, autonomy of ideas and autonomy of teams. Are the people that get autonomy going to outperform the people that don't get it? That's sort of

Brad Werner  57:26 
the first question I say, Yes. And I have I have not read the findings. I just read the abstracts. Okay, good. So I was, I would say, yes, bottom line is, at least in my understanding of my life experience, is that getting involved in things that you're passionate about? Without that passion? There's no way you're going to work? 100 hour weeks, but Right. So being able to self select into the idea, for me, at least, is far more important than self selecting into the team.

Jeff York  57:51 
Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you're dead on? What made the bigger difference was when they had autonomy of ideas, but not autonomy of teams, those teams and the way they measure performance, by the way, it was they did pitch decks. I know. Yeah. Yeah. I know, to investors, and the investors raised the pitch. But honestly, if you think about if you were designing experiment, like what do you do with into your class? Brad, there's always

Brad Werner  58:12 
a pitch to investors. Yes. But this could be an entire podcast, talking about investor judging the quality of investors and the the scope and universe that they can see things in.

Jeff York  58:24 
So take my word for it. These guys did everything I think humanly can to control. I mean, obviously, there's still variables that are sure, of course, I mean, it's no research is perfect, that's for sure. Right. So they did find that both autonomy, an idea that teams being able to pick amongst their ideas, as well as autonomy and choosing their teams, those teams outperformed those that had no autonomy that were assigned ideas or assigned teams. However, the people that had autonomy of IDEA outperformed the people that had autonomy of teams,

Brad Werner  58:55 
right? And I think that directly goes into the passion and love for whatever you're working on. You're you're

Jeff York  59:00 
you're dead on, you're dead on. Well, I can be an academic good, except for you wouldn't know how to actually prove this to anyone. But you could say it true. Yeah, Brad and I are gonna have a competition actually, this is going to be so for you all three of our fans out there. Coming up in the new semester, we have a live session with our Executive MBA, and we're going to answer questions they ask we have no idea what the questions are. Brad can only use his personal experience. I cannot use any of my personal experience only examples from research and the audience is going to rate the quality of our answers. I got bad feeling about oh, by the

Brad Werner  59:33 
way, we need to open up a batting line on this Yeah, but you actually

Jeff York  59:37 
just do a call in version we show that'd be so fun. Okay, anyway, calc that. I won't talk about Fisher Dungeons and Dragons. Oh, that anymore. But okay, so what I was saying you were dead on because what happens is, there's what's called a mediation. So mediation just I mean, you know what mediation is, it's the path by which the independent variable affects the dependent variable, independent variable here is The ability to have autonomy and your ideas, the dependent variable is your portraits a pitch deck. And what we're looking for are things that we add them into the regression model, it actually takes away that initial effect, thus implying it's mediated through the new variable we've added. And what they added to show that mediation is interest in the topic I have

Brad Werner  1:00:18 
met. So my big question to you is, is anyone still awake? Yes, of

Jeff York  1:00:21 
course, they are. Fascinating stuff, right? Come on, man. No, but you're I'm just telling You're right. Sure. You tell me you're falling asleep. I'm telling you, right. Okay. Yeah, I do. Listen to that. Okay. Yeah, you like that part? And interestingly enough, it just is, I bet you would expect the impact of the autonomy on choosing your team is actually mediated by the size of your network and the networking. Right. So this is why Brad and I, and most good entrepreneurship, teachers spend a lot of time telling students Yeah, you know, all those people that said, Don't make your hobby, your business, they don't know what they're talking about. That's actually a great thing to make.

Brad Werner  1:00:57 
That's right. And then by the way, people that say, follow your passions, don't listen to them, because I actually love the Chicago Cubs. But there's no way that I'm going to be playing first base for the Cubs next year. Right. So follow passion, something you like, but that you're good at.

Jeff York  1:01:13 
Yes. So it's a combination of passion, and knowledge and ability to actually do something with it. Right. Like, you know, you can care about something all day long. But if you can't do anything about it, then that I mean, you know, opportunity is defined by an idea and action. Like, actions got of traction. Yeah.

Brad Werner  1:01:34 
Yeah. You know what, though? And actually, but that action is critically important, right? People think about things all the time. If I could go in the garage, I could invent the new Velcro, or you could that not me, but I know, but But taking action is critical. And I think that there are a lot of people listen here that say, you know, I should do this. And don't you got to take that first

Jeff York  1:01:53 
step. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So here's the thing. Now, do you think people they got full autonomy? The people that would come into your class or my class, autonomy of idea, autonomy of teams? Did those people outperform the people that had no autonomy, that people have autonomy? If I do that,

Brad Werner  1:02:10 
I don't even want to talk about my class. I want to talk about personal experience here. Okay, good. Because so so I would, I would say that as an angel investor, yeah. That is normally the case, right? That they've selected the idea. They've selected their team, for whatever reason in the background, and they look for funding.

Jeff York  1:02:26 
Yep. Right. And that is not what they find. I don't have my buzzer sound today. But I'm

Brad Werner  1:02:31 
saying no, but I'm saying that that's who you run into.

Jeff York  1:02:34 
Yeah. And of the people you run into as an angel investor, how many of them do you invest in?

Brad Werner  1:02:40 
Like, we know that those numbers are nine out of 10 of them fail?

Jeff York  1:02:43 
Yeah. And so you invest in like one tenant? Absolute most right? Oh, like 150? Maybe maybe one out of 100? Yeah. So and I have never I've approached angel investment. My 15 years of teaching entrepreneurship. On multiple occasions. I've never made one investment almost made when Brad talked me out. Yeah. So anyway, you'll have an opportunity for that later. Yeah, someday, someday. So here's the thing, they find that the teams that have total autonomy perform worse than any of the other teams. Think about that. Why do you think that is? I thought that was really

Brad Werner  1:03:16 
I you know, I actually I don't know why that is. And I don't say that very often. Yeah, this is great. But But I would, but I would say, Yeah, that's actually really interesting. And maybe even an interesting takeaway. And when I mentioned that startup studio concept before, I'm actually I, one of my early students is big into startup studio, Jake Hurwitz, if you're out there. Hello, and I'm plugging what you're doing a little bit, because I really like to hear the approach is select these awesome problems and have people resonate to the problems and, and then build teams around those problems. I think it's a really interesting way to go about and

Jeff York  1:03:49 
that's, that would be that actually follows the findings of this paper because I was going along and I'm like, you know, I'm a typical American. You know, I'm a libertarian vote Democrat when it matters. And I'm going along, and I'm saying like, you know, oh, well, I just Yeah, surely the people that total autonomy are going to perform the best. No. And here's what they find is the mechanism. They do some other research and other interviews and things like that. Try to figure out what's going on here. Yep. They become completely overconfident and lazy, because they've all chosen the idea. And they've all nodded each other and said, Yes, this is a great idea. And then they've chosen people exactly like themselves or as much like themselves. Now they don't they say diversity specifically can't explain away this problem. But But what happens is if you choose the idea, and they choose a bunch of people who self select into the idea, they all nodded each other, they all become confident this thing's going to be great. And they don't present very good evidence in their final pitch presentation. So you know, I've seen this so many times.

Brad Werner  1:04:46 
Okay, so So this, this goes to something that actually gets under my skin. And here's the credible takeaway for any entrepreneur listening out there is that you have to have people on your team that will actually challenge it. Every decision that you make is you cannot have Hey, this is a great idea. Great idea. Great idea. We all vote yes. And we're off to the races,

Jeff York  1:05:06 
you actually need to tell our angel investors, this is a great idea. And that's, well, that happens every day.

Brad Werner  1:05:14 
But I do think that this making sure that you set up an environment that allows for two cents. Yeah, but and look at Patagonia and I want to take a big company for a second even though this is we're going off of this. The Patagonia they had a person I think in their Norwegian office stood up and said, Why don't we make clothes last forever? Yeah. And the executive team around him looked at him and thought the people are nuts. What are you gonna do? You're gonna we're gonna design ourselves out of business. Turns out though, that they tested that and sales increased by 40%.

Jeff York  1:05:41 
Well, Patagonia is famous for this stuff like Black Friday, don't buy this jacket. Yeah, I love I love that. And so you and I, people who care about the environment and like, actually want to go buy high performing clothing, say, Well, you know, like, you buy this thing from The North Face, who actually does an awful lot on sustainability people to know about Patagonia, I'm probably gonna buy it from Patagonia because like I want to in Patagonia

Brad Werner  1:06:04 
allows you an avenue to resell it back to them.

Jeff York  1:06:08 
Yesterday, I took a bunch of stuff down there that either didn't like or whatever it didn't want actually didn't fit because I got so muscular during COVID. And they bought it all back at 50%. And I bought Christmas present. That's incredible. I mean, that cool. Yeah. So 20 years ago, that model was not existed. No, no. I mean, it still isn't for any other. I can't think of the other cortex. Okay. arcteryx would do that. Yeah, I'd probably used to till they went out. Yes. So now we are nerdy Swegway into outdoor clothing companies because we're bold rights. So anyway, I think this is I mean, I've seen this so many times in class. I've seen like a group of people land on idea. And they're all like very bright students. And I'm like, Man, these people are gonna light it up. They're gonna dominate this class. And they just don't like the comes to the end. And their presentation is like so like nodding each. One example, I thought was just right. I had these people super passionate about addressing food deserts in their cities, wonderful topic, wonderful thing to do. They're like, gonna get these reclaimed ugly foods, if you've heard about this is just the food that doesn't make the groceries wrong, it's not pretty, they're gonna go get these foods, they set the supply chain, and they're gonna sell pre made meals, they're gonna get rid of the food punks are gonna make pre made meals, they're gonna sell them in food deserts in their city in Denver. Interesting, interesting idea, right? Like, you know, maybe not gonna set the world on fire for not getting an IPO out of this. But you know, it's a great business idea is gonna solve problem they absolutely bombed. And our final presentation, what question do you think the judge asked? It totally killed him? Actually, Bob tried to think how the presentation would go was idea we got to suddenly food it's a problem. There's these food deserts. We're gonna solve it. You know what?

Brad Werner  1:07:48 
I made a loss actually, Jeff. Okay.

Jeff York  1:07:51 
How many of your customers have you talked to? Well, I'm

Brad Werner  1:07:53 
assuming that he talked to 100. Oh, no.

Jeff York  1:07:56 
They've talked to community leaders? What? Yes. Oh, no, they're so confident that everybody's gonna buy this. And then unfortunately, we had people who worked in social entrepreneurship ventures in their city and hired people that you know, are tough time employed and things like that. And the judges were just like, What makes you think people are gonna buy these healthy pre made meals? Like, I tend to think that my work, people are really busy, and they just want to buy something their kids will eat? Right? So that's incredible. Your price points about the same as McDonald's. Yeah, it was unbelievable why they were so confident because they all nodded at each other had this idea together. And we're like, yes, we're gonna we're good to go. Right.

Unknown Speaker  1:08:39 
Well, sorry. Yeah. Well, there you go.

Jeff York  1:08:41 
That's effectively what happened. Yeah. So I think I went into reading this study thinking like, yeah, the totally autonomous people got before him, because that's the American way and freedom. And, and I think there's some interesting insights here of like, well,

Brad Werner  1:08:55 
you know, what, maybe avoid conflict, I think that there's just a kind of a natural instinct, and avoiding that conflict can be extremely dangerous for your business.

Jeff York  1:09:02 
Right, which is why I think having these classes where you have people from different disciplines is really important. Yeah.

Brad Werner  1:09:08 
But But beyond that, it's setting up a culture of your business. Yes, that allows for dissension and actually allows you to go out and test that dissension. Yeah.

Jeff York  1:09:17 
And having people on your team that will force you to do that, right. Not just not insane. Right. Right. Right. Well, you're right, this is just this. It sells itself. Anyway. So hopefully, that's what you think, actually, I like it a lot. Okay, cool. You actually went inside. So look, hey, if you're gonna go out there. And if you're trying to get more creativity in your business, make sure you get people at least the autonomy of the team they work with, better give them autonomy about the ideas they're going to work with, but don't necessarily give them both because they're all just going to look at each other and say, we got a great idea. Remember, we talked about it's still a great idea. And same thing if you're teaching entrepreneurship, you know, I'm actually making me rethink my teaching practices a little bit here. Although I'll probably still get people Tommy because I think it's important. But now I actually have I can bring up this paper that's right at the end of the school debrief and say, Well, why did this team that like, you guys all selected your teams and you selected dry? did? Why did some teams do so poorly when it seemed like they were, I think that's a great debrief. And you can point to it in class, right? Well, here's some research.

Brad Werner  1:10:16 
But in the real world, ask why about every decision that you're making? Absolutely right, and press it and create that culture that allows for that weekly executive meetings, where you actually try to push back and put holes in your own ideas, I think would be a great way to go.

Jeff York  1:10:31 
No, I totally agree. Cool. All right. So that's been creative distillation for for this podcast. We are here in season three, which is kind of unbelievable to me. And just astounding, and really exciting. If you enjoy the podcast, make sure you hit that little subscribe button. It's on, wherever you're listening to by us on Spotify, or Apple or Google or whatever you're doing, click subscribe. And that really helps us out even better go write a review, talk about how men you know, Jeff brings all these interesting, deep, theoretically rich insights. And Brad just shoots them down. Like they really should fire him and get another academic on that it can really help, you know, elevate just brilliant ideas. You know, write anything you want, right? Like I hated this, and that helps us so yeah, please do that.

Brad Werner  1:11:16 
Yeah. Where do they email us? They can email me at CD. podcast@colorado.edu. Yeah, that's creative distillation CD. podcast@colorado.edu. I'd love to take your questions other than the No, I'm actually getting a little tired of all of the royalty from Nigeria that keeps hitting me up.

Jeff York  1:11:33 
So you did that investment with the Nigerian friends. Right. Yeah,

Brad Werner  1:11:36 
I haven't heard back yet. Yeah, really? Yeah. Really? It

Jeff York  1:11:39 
sounded so good.

Brad Werner  1:11:40 
I think you know, it was it was 10 grand. Well, you know, that's right. But it's gonna turn 20 the return is you Yes, 7 million bucks. So

Jeff York  1:11:47 
if you'd like to get in on this Nigerian prince offer that Brad is taking part in, give him a shot at CD podcast. Once again, I'm Jeff York, research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, joined by I'm Brad Warner,

Brad Werner  1:11:59 
with a damning signer, just as I was it's fun to have have these conversations, Joel, thank you. And thanks for everyone that that's listening. We hope we provide value entertainments and just really get your thinking

Jeff York  1:12:11 
and if we don't write a scathing review, please. All right, we'll see you next time. Thanks so much. Let's enjoy the rest afternoon here at Sunita we could do that sounds good.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai