From Alcohol to a Non-Alcoholic Empire

Bill Shufelt2:46

Yeah, definitely a lot there to unpack on on the breweries. To begin with, I have an incredible co-founder, John Walker, and we've been working together and growing together and learning together ever since 2017 when we were home brewing on Gatorade jugs. And that's gone from, you know, plastic Gatorade jugs to a three barrel system to a 20 barrel brew house. Um, and then we 3,000 mi across the country built a brewery that was about five times that size and then quadrupled that one. The next brewery was 100 times the size of that first one.

And we were putting steel in the ground in big size before manufacturing was cool in this country. And, you know, we had a lot of ethos on building that quality from the ground up like US-made infrastructure, hiring people with full-time jobs. And so, we can get back to all that, too. But, yeah, I'm the missionary and mercenary, too. Like I know both of us left really strong careers in finance and you know I thought for sure I would have never left that but I had this vision that the world had a huge hole in it and for the first and like the economic reality of that future was very uncertain for me and my family but the potential positive impact on that was like a much more fulfilling endpoint than you know a somewhat hollow monetary endpoint and that's where I got to like the missionary versus mercenary.

It's like, you know, capital structure can take a lot of forms and non-alcoholic beer was about 0% of the beer market when we got into it. It's been a enormous slog to get it to 2% of the beer market. But we have like we know with enormous confidence in our hearts that non-alcoholic beer is going to 10% 20% and maybe even like 50% of the beer market over time. And that may or may not happen without Athletic Brewing leading the charge with great beer and great marketing, great people behind it.

And so whatever form the capital structure takes, like I'm going to be the one driving that bus with John.

Bill Shufelt5:06

On the word like miraculous. It's funny you say that. I, you know, not to get too weird or anything, my mom passed away 24 25 years ago, but she instilled this like incredible optimism in me as a child. like you know you say crazy things in middle school with really big goals and like like competing in the Olympics or like things that.1% of people get to levels of different things and she made me believe I could do any of those things and in terms of like miraculous like one of the books that 12 years ago like right around the time I stopped drinking kind of potentially changed my life was the book the alchemist which is you know it's basically the universe conspiring to help you achieve your goals like if you know what you want to Um, and then I'm also a big fan of this word proninoia, which is the opposite of paranoia, but it's basically like you're like rather than being like

On the lookout and paranoid that everything's going to go wrong all the time, I feel like I just have this delusional optimism that yeah, kind of fuels my fire.

Bill Shufelt6:07

Where did you grow up? grew up in a a great community up in Connecticut, Darien, Connecticut. Um, you know, very very lucky where I landed on this earth. It's a really great town. I don't I have an awesome family. Had a ton of extended family in the town

And yeah, basically everyone in the town at least at that point like works in finance basically and uh so had had a great childhood there.

Bill Shufelt6:39

Uh Middlebury College in Vermont.

Bill Shufelt6:46

Yep.

Bill Shufelt6:48

So I, you know, my mom passed away right around the end of high school. I would say I was on as aggressive a track as you could be through high school and um I you know every honors class, three sport captain, volunteer on the ambulance was an EMT and then an ambulance driver.

Jeez. um like every activity under the sun, even my electives beyond all honors classes, I would take like Latin for and my parents weren't driving that. That was me. Like they were encouraged me to try to find spots to take a step back and I just like

Was grinding so hard for whatever TBD endp point. I think it's just internal competition. But then I think, you know, blew off some steam, had fun in college, and there's probably a lot to unpack there with like my mom dying, like, you know, maybe lack of discipline, stuff like that. But, um, had a lot of fun in college, not as much school going on, but I always had like default finance in my head. So, you know, of course, I did the interviews at every bulge bracket bank, went to the super days, and didn't get any jobs or internships in finance.

So kind of started at the bottom of the rung in finance at a group, a company called Knight Capital Group, which in like that was my perception at the time. In no means was it actually the bottom. It

I went to this trading floor of 500 great people. The the culture in that building like it was I actually had a Middlebury professor who said, "You might want to consider this firm." He's like, "If you're that interested in trading, it is like the trading shop." And I got in there and got like an unbelievable education in trading, unbelievable mentors in the building, a great culture, 500 people in that room in sales and trading, like open call, like Mike's on all the time.

Bill Shufelt8:36

Um, started on the help desk, worked my way off that in 6 to 12 months. Did biotech, then jumped to a financials desk through 2007, 2008, 2009. Yeah, equities. Always equities. um financials through the uh crisis and then most of the rest of my finance career was in like biotech and healthcare.

Bill Shufelt10:48

With no research product no reason for like the research product is you like

You have to be on the desk earlier than all your people you're covering. You have to add value for them every day.

And when they opened up their phone in the morning, I wanted them to scroll through and look for my name and be like, "This is what's going on in the world, and this is the first thing I'm going to read."

But that requires you to be there early. Like, you've got to be there when they're commu. You've got to have that already written in their inbox when they're commuting. But I did, you know, at before Middlebury, I was at like on like a top of the world track and I was like really happy about that. and then you know honestly like underperformed slacked off and I I paid the price for that where I started my career and you know at night worked really hard I got my CFA in three years outside of that you know that's like a 300 to 500 hour a year studying commitment

Bill Shufelt11:44

Yeah there's like 10,000 people in those rooms a year and they're hard tests and um you know but I was making $35,000 a year and I had almost all my friends at bulge bracket banks making a guaranteed paid 100,000 salary, 100,000 bonus. Y

And I had a real complex around that. And so I was working hard and I I intended to just work at night and move my way up. And I I think I was like making a name for myself in the room and I had an incredible boss there, a number of them. Um from Andrew and Colin to start and then uh John and then a guy named Joe Miselle gave me a huge chance and it's just incredible guy. Um, but then you know I I basically told Joe I was like I would hitch my wagon to you the rest of my career and like one of the best things he ever did was like push me towards like what's that next step in your chapter like let me help you get to there and you know those types of people who believe in you along the way and see your hard work and see potential that I didn't even see in myself.

Like

I remember Joe saying you're going to run your own firm someday. You're going to run your own business. And I I was laughing at that in my head. I was like there's absolutely no way I will ever run my own business. But that kind of confidence was like really helped push me and drive me. And then um one day like you know my dream shop you know night was like the trading like like through especially the credit crisis and stuff. The volumes going through Knight Capital were like hundred million share orders coming in because all the other bank counterparties had credit risks and stuff.

And like the volume going through those pipes was like once in a lifetime. And then you know the next dream job that I thought I would never get a look at was SAC Capital which was like going from the sell side to the buy side. The top of the heap in trading shops.

That is an aggressive place. getting into I I helped run the intern program at SAC for a few years and like look through applications and I said to my wife like this intern program is like 40 times as hard to get into as Harvard. So I felt so lucky to even get my foot in the door for a conversation there and got hired there. That was a moment to just get in and work my tail off at SAC and, you know, help those top of the heap traders and especially Steve and earn it every single day.

And I mean, talk about an environment that if you didn't show up and be on fire. Like there's a lot like written and speculated about Steve, but it is as meritocratic an institution as they're in, you are graded every day. He is on it. like if there's something happening in the market, he figures it out in 30 seconds and he will blast you if you've missed it and it's in your sector and if you're off one day but if you show up every day and are doing your best like it is a very fair and meritocratic institution too.

So that was the kind of chance I was looking for too is like the next chapter and so I did six or seven years at night and six or seven years at SAC in 72.

Bill Shufelt15:32

It's I mean it's a performance culture that not everyone's built for and but there are people who like me who are like built for that too. And um

Bill Shufelt15:53

For sure. And there's a very high level of expectation and a way to sift through who are the most talented people in the room and like who's going to get those opportunities, who's going to get teamed up with the best portfolio managers, and you're graded every day. And you know, it's not an environment where you're taking two week vacations. Like there will there will be someone in that seat when you get back.

Bill Shufelt16:20

Yeah. leaving that world and founding a company and like you know I wanted a meritocracy where like people come come in and have unbounded opportunity

Which is what I wanted but then you figure out things like oh it's

You know you can't just put everyone on salary

And like give them a ton of opportunity let let them run like there has to be real structure throughout everything but no they they follow all the rules over there for sure but it's

But within that they offer like so much opportunity too

Bill Shufelt17:15

Yeah. Um, so it's, you know, I'd been on that track, I guess, like growing up in a town that was like extremely financeoriented and saw successful as like a monetary endpoint. So I thought I was on the career path I wanted to be on. I thought money was the most important endpoint and, you know, I was just going to work as hard as I could to get to that end point essentially as early in age as I could get to that end point, too. But I I was also under the assumption that like nobody liked work, too.

And so I was working extremely hard um going out to three or four work dinners a week. Like the expectation is well you can not go out to work dinners too but like it is a very social industry. You can go out you could either sit at home or you could go out to research dinners and learn. You could go out to broker dinners and build better relationships with the people. So when you call and pick up their phone they know you. They know they trust you.

They know how you interact. You've got to maintain those relationships. So when there is a fire drill and you are calling someone need to convey something in 8 seconds like that person knows you beyond

Bill Shufelt18:19

Hi what's your name again like and so you know I was out 150 nights a year maintaining those relationships learning my industry um at the desk usually at 6:00 a.m. in the morning after that trying to work out before and you know Sunday nights were like my Sunday scaries for the week ahead were so bad like my weeks were so intense. I was living for the weekends

And ultimately I was living for like that one week or two weeks of vacation a year. I was like, "Oh, that is life."

And the rest of this is just like a period to like endure to get to like that period of relaxation. Like my Sundays were miserable. And as a result, I was, you know, drinking at work dinners, but then like drinking even on non-work nights to escape that stress. Like it is when you have 12 monitors and you are going as hard as you can all day, you need a way to escape and wind down. And um you know I hadn't fully realized my love of exercise and fitness too at that point.

So you know alcohol was definitely one of those like the way I would like escape from the stress of the day and like you know do the windshield wipers and start it all again the next day. And so you know very often it was like one or two nights one or two drinks a night and then like on weekends depending if it was like with my wife or with friends like there'd be hugely variable amounts of drinking. you know, tons of bachelor parties, weddings.

Bill Shufelt19:46

Just drinking. Like, yeah, it's, you know, everyone has different college phases, but mine was in Vermont and like there's obviously like weed everywhere in Vermont, but um

It just building on the unproductivity of my college, but the drinking like really added up and like drinking to relieve stress and the more stressful it gets, the more you drink. And so ultimately, you know, it was going from like being in my mid20s where you can handle that easily, where you can sleep 3 hours a night and get right back at it and burn candles at both ends. Eventually, the treads on the tire really wear and the synapses don't fire as fast. You're not as healthy.

You're not as quick as you used to be. And that did start to almost in many ways get like self-destructive. Like if you really look at it with an honest lens, I think there were times I was drinking a lot almost to self-destruct and get me out of the cycle I was in. Like my body is just like

Get this guy out of whatever he is doing to me every single week of the year.

And so, you know, I should have seen the writing on the wall way earlier than I did. And you know, there were I've let down in so many different ways. Family, friends, my wife, like we've we started dating at the end of high school. We got married in 2014 or 15. Um, but like the amount of times I like let her down or like, you know, she was taking me to Turks and Caicos on my 30th birthday and I basically missed the flight. Like had an extremely stressful work week.

Went out to watch, you know, March Madness games, thought for sure I was going to make it. And, you know, all in like a 24-hour period, I missed a flight for my 30th birthday to Turks and Caicos, which was like obviously an extremely nice planned weekend. And in the same weekend, missed my first nephew's like birth basically. Um, you know, my sister called me to let me know it was happening and stuff. I was drunk, don't remember it. and then basically like asked like what's going on like a day or two later which is like you know she like totally let me off the hook for that and like probably should have held me accountable but like things like that in hindsight are like so like personally disappointing and I think it was like in a period there where it was all extremely condensed and there was so much stress and you know I I never like wrap my car around a telephone pole or

Something and I had such great support and friends and bosses in my life that I think there was like a lot of guard rails there and like people kind of looking out for me but probably wearing pretty thin also on their patients you know I was never like totally not performing in any area of my life and uh you know after drinking a lot in the spring I started training for my first ultramarathon that summer I was running an extra mile every weekend and like trying to stay on track getting up to like mid 20 miles on the weekends and like basically dying on the street I was not in a health shape to run that I'm not running 10 miles every morning like you.

But I was like enduring and getting excited about that and it was like one of my first fitness goals. But you know during the fall there too it I you know went to a couple weddings where you know it's there there was one time where I got pulled over driving home from a wedding the next day but I had been out till 4 or 5 with my college friends and then was driving home 5 hours later. Like if there was a breathalyzer involved there how much does that change my career?

Y

Ultimately as I was like trying to do this big endurance feat, my drinking was starting to affect work in a way. I was like more hung over, more bad days, just not up to the expectation I'd built over my career at night in SAC. And like I just felt myself like totally falling off the goals potentially. And my wife, we're 6 months from getting married and she was like, you know, I you've got to start putting down all the cash deposits on this stuff. Like she's like, I don't know if we're getting to this finish line.

Just like drinking too much in that like final chapter there of like the training for the first ultramarathon. I was like, you know, I'm going to give it 30 days and see how this feels like in this like final training block. And it was like, wo, alcohol is affecting like every single thing I care about. And there was like one final big weekend that I went into my bosses and I was basically like my my bosses Jeff and Phil are were incredible at 72 and good friends to this day.

And I was basically like, I want you to hold me accountable. I'm going to make this call for good today. And I was like, I basically want you guys to send me home if I ever come in and I've been out the night before anything ever again. And so I made a hard switch in my life that was like deeply personal. My wife helped hold me accountable. My boss has helped hold me accountable. And I feel like I got to that decision like almost because of this arbitrary fitness goal, too, that I was like caring, but also a lot of personal and work stuff, too.

It was just a moment where I was turning 30, about to get married, had this big fitness goal, felt my work slipping. And had all that not happened, I no doubt would have any number of like things could have happened in the next 6 months that I don't know what that would have looked like, but it wouldn't have been great. I think a lot of people live on that edge, you know. But I immediately found too I was like a they helped me get connected with a few people in the firm who had also stopped drinking or didn't drink like very big senior guys who became unbelievable mentors and like got me on the right track which is like just a lifelong um I I don't know what the right word is but I have incredible gratitude for them you know is very junior to these guys and uh I incredible respect for them and to for them to help me get on the right

Track and feel like totally secure with that decision and then basically be like absolutely nobody is going to care if you stop drinking. And I was like sure like I expected all my friends and all my counterparties at the banks and stuff and I found I was shocked that like nobody cared that I stopped drinking which was like a huge thing of relief and all of a sudden I had unlocked this like biggest hack I'd ever discovered. Like I, you know, I'd always been like trying to find the next like productivity hack, fitness hack, diet, everything, but I was just like washing it out with this like hugely unproductive thing in like enormous amounts basically every day of the week.

And all of a sudden when that stopped, it was like I started reading books again. I found this like intellectual curiosity I hadn't had. My relationship with my wife got closer than I ever had. We had more meaningful connection. my friends and family, like you know, even my brother and sister, like relationships I'd like just neglected totally unintentionally, like all started to like get really strong again. And my friends didn't care at all. Like rather than like, you know, the invites don't stop when you stop drinking.

The invites stop when you have a drinking problem and people don't want you're around and people don't want you making stupid toasts or driving your car, getting in trouble. the invites actually like if anything picked up and like um you know I realized too like wow I must have been like really embarrassing myself as the night went on at different times too. So like but like between like personal relationships work productivity fitness like I know you've seen it but like I went from someone who was like surviving like I worked out all the time but I was surviving workouts.

It was like a fitness check the box like need to flush a system you know I was eating and drinking unhealthy so I needed to work out to balance that and I became someone who was like wow I love working out this is one of the best parts of my day I'm like bl all the stress I thought I was blowing off drinking I started to be able to attack with workouts and I was like oh this is like even better for eating that stress I can do a 30 minute treadmill sprint workout and like I don't care what happened to you that day You can kill yourself in 30 minutes.

Yeah. You have thought through all the world's problems and sweat it out. And um you know I later found books like Phil Knight's shoe dog where like he speaks to that too.

But like between killer workouts and all of a sudden too like by the way

Alcohol doesn't help you sleep. It's like yeah. So like if you take this ingredient out you will see all of a sudden you will realize that you can have great sleep as an adult. You don't have to wake up at 3:00 or 4 in the morning with like a ball of stress in your head. Y

I I sleep through the night every single night except when I have an infant or sick kid. But um it it's incredible. Like I discovered this world of 95% sleep scores, good fitness. My like work days were less stressful. I didn't hate Sundays anymore. Like all of a sudden work was this like intellectual challenge. I got to see my colleagues again and I was just like firing on levels I'd never been firing as an adult. all within like it it's not like a one day thing you got to like do the work but like within six months I was like a totally different human and I I considered myself an extremely high performing person and I grew more in the next 6 months and then like 10 years after than I could have ever imagined growing as an adult and which I so I was like so lucky to have this like confluence of moments and realization at the very near bottom there.

Bill Shufelt30:13

Yeah. You know, from the outside in there's there's such hate for Wall Street. like there's such an appearance of money and excess and

There are people working incredibly hard and sacrificing everything in those seats. But I, you know, no one feels sorry for someone like I was like I like I I use the word I, but I am representative of just like millions and millions of people in any job. Like

Bill Shufelt30:44

Yeah.

Bill Shufelt30:46

Yeah. But like not all prisons have walls like you can walk in and out of your own daily prison but like and it's not only career like the expectation was so high you know and I put that mostly on myself like I'm not blaming anyone for that especially in a city like New York City you can make any amount of money and the expectation is so high and the lifestyle meets any salary that shows up. Some people thrive in it.

And then yeah, and I know no one's going to feel sorry for someone who's like living in an apartment in the West Village with a golf club membership and stuff like that, but the the stress, the expectation, the intensity of the work week, the impossibility to stay on top of your health, but more than anything too is like the the empty end points is like is one of the big missing things. Like you can be as like intellectually stimulated and like the dopamine of like wins on a daily basis and things and like short-term things for sure hit, but like the lack of like a a long-term real goal to latch on to and an impact and like a chance to impact people is like was truly prison to me.

And I like if you asked me before I stopped drinking, would I hit fast forward on my life for 5 years or 10 years? Like not knowing what happens in that decade even. I would have absolutely probably hit fast forward for 10 years.

Bill Shufelt32:10

Which is like incredibly sad. But it shows I was like just enduring this like painful unfulfilling part of my life to get to whatever that next thing was. And but I would have never imagined there was a different way to do it also. I I I didn't see it. I And you know, I think that like the lack of fulfillment is where like the drinking and like a lot of the stress came from too. And but it very heavy and extremely stressful. I can't tell you how tough like the Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays especially are.

And even like the thought the prospect of like a three-day weekend was like oh my goodness. Um, but then like also like I would totally blow those three-day weekends. Like when you're like drinking that much and stuff too, like one of the best uncoverings of stopping drinking was like you have like 300 fresh hours of weekend that you don't otherwise have. Like I naturally wake up at 6:30 a.m. if not earlier on weekend mornings and like feel so good, work out, love cooking breakfast with my family.

Before kids, it was like, you know, go for workouts, go to a juice bar, and like those were all of a sudden like great hours. They were terrible hours when I was drinking.

Bill Shufelt34:25

Well, a big wakeup for me too was I I was not wealthy. I was not that far along in my financial career. Hopefully, I was on my way, but I was starting to meet a fair amount of people with 50, 100, 100 plus million dollars and realizing that like I do not like interacting with them.

I do not like the I thought these were my where I wanted to be and I should maybe really be rethinking that too.

Bill Shufelt36:27

Yeah. And I mean even after I stopped drinking, it is a it's a great worldass firm. Steve gives everyone all the opportunity in the world. I loved my colleagues like the people I sat on the trading desk with and some of my PMs were just awesome people. Um and like so intellectually sharp too. It's like

Bill Shufelt36:53

Graduated more great fund managers than anyone. And some of these people I talked to, especially some of the biotech specialists are some of the smartest people I've ever interacted in my life. And

The way they can see a headline that a thousand other people say see and have a totally differentiated contrarian take is something I very much learned from

Interacting with these people. Um, so I I would not trade the lessons and the colleagues I got to meet there for anything in the world. It was a great spot to sharpen your sword in your career. But when I stopped drinking, you know, I expected to be on this island and take a big step back. And I very quickly realized that none of my friends cared. And so I was still being social, still going out to weddings and dinners with my wife and other couples and stuff.

And then I started to have other friends start to ask me too, you know, just so I had asked the senior guy at point 72 like how did you do it? like what was your path like? And he was so generous with his time. These people started to come to me and like ask me like, oh, how was it? Like are you like a total outsider? like and they'd like whisper and be like very self-conscious about like drinking stopping drinking has a you know it it's much less in other civilization or other countries but in the US since we had prohibition and since like it's it's been steered to be anonymous like I I have all the respect I think AA does great things I think it's a great program but there is this like anonymity stigma to it that you should be like keep it like in a way like keep it to yourself.

It's something to be embarrassed about. Like

Had people like come to me and like kind of whisper through the stigma and be like how is it like and I was like it's unquestionably the best thing that's ever happened to me and like every single part of my life's better

Bill Shufelt38:43

And people would be like like absolutely blown away by that. But I I helped like three or four good friends with families get sober and those interactions were like the most meaningful thing at that point that had ever happened to me in my life.

So I, you know, I was kind of going about my way and had those small interactions and, you know, I'd be out at all my work dinners and stuff and there were no options at all too. And so I was like, you know, I I don't think my experience is like that abnormal. I started to wonder like like why? Like there've got to be more people than me not drinking here. Like I would pay $10 for a good beer if it didn't have alcohol. I'd pay $15 for a good cocktail if like the bartender just cared to make something decent rather than just like a soda water with a lime.

And I was staying there and like just saying this has got to be an unmet opportunity. But you know I'd go out to work dinners and drink an oels if they had it and you know get kind of made fun of by my colleagues a little bit. And there was like enough social friction where I was a bit awkward. But more than I think it was like disappointing from a culinary perspective. I was someone who loved beer. I love food. I love socializing. Like part of the reason I was an alcoholic was cuz I loved socializing.

I didn't like going home. And like if anyone was still out that was going to be me. Like so I just generally liked having fun. I'm a total joker. And there was like the disappointing amount of options too. And that festered with me in like just so many restaurants, so many bars, there were no options, weddings being super awkward, like not holding anything in your hand at a wedding for 3 hours, like all this like social friction. I was like eventually it kind of broke. I was walking to dinner with my wife one night.

I was like, why wouldn't there just be like a decent non-alcoholic beer? Could someone put like a half an effort into it? Like I would buy all of them. And AC along this time too, I started to just like look up like how many people in this country don't drink. Like how many people are documented alcoholics and there are 15 million documented alcoholics in this country more or less in any given year, you know? And

Bill Shufelt41:06

Yeah. And then I read stats like 50% of adults have 0.1 drinks or less per week. I was like, oh. And then it's like, oh, only like 10% of adults have more than like seven drinks a week. I was like, oh. And I was like, wow, maybe I was just in like the very upper band of this. And then I started to think, I was like, the beverage industry then is missing like half the population. And so are bars and restaurants. Like I used to live above a great bar in the West Village.

And I think like 25% of independent bars in this country have shut down in the last 20 years just cuz like less and less people are going out. There's less community. There's not like a like local watering hole where people like go and like work out their problems and blow off steam from the workday. And like the there is a natural moderation trend happening. And I was just like staring that down and I was like saying to my wife like why doesn't this exist? like it's it's so obvious and I need it.

And she was like, "You should do that." Like she basically like spun me around in the path we're walking on. And um I don't want to bore bore you with like the entrepreneur story that you know so well, but like it it took

Bill Shufelt42:14

It took her recognizing like the need I personally felt and then my wife did an incredible job of connecting a lot of the dots too where she was like we talked about so excitedly that whole dinner. We got back to the hotel room. We were on a vacation in Jamaica at the time. We got back to the hotel room and just started like googling like trends and stats and stuff and it just like it uncovered to me that there were like just like the numbers are so big of people that don't drink.

And I'd seen it with the same brokers I used to go out to tons of dinners at. And I'd started to have pretty unbelievable success being like, "Hey, instead of at the dinner, do you want to like do like a Barry's boot camp or a tone house or like a soul cycle?" Um, and everyone was like, "Thank God, yes." Like,

Bill Shufelt43:01

And so all these data points were circling in my life. And you know, this is ahead of like Huberman and AIA and Whoop. Like that stuff wouldn't come for another few years.

Bill Shufelt43:14

For sure. And um I love his podcast and like what him and Aia do and like Rhonda Patrick like condensing information for busy people is beyond positive impact.

Bill Shufelt43:53

Oh, they've done such an incredible service for the world and myself personally from you know even from like big health building blocks to like like pretty sick productivity enhancements too. Um, but yeah, my wife like so I was like living that personal productivity curve before like whoop bands or rings and and like these resources were as acceptable and or accessible and it wasn't as obvious like health and wellness was going to be like such a mega trend.

Bill Shufelt44:23

But my wife did a really good job connecting those dots. She was like, "You're clearly out in front of this curve just personally between like my personal fitness goals." You know, I I'm up for trying any supple like any like supplement or like I was like such an early Athletic Greens user and like don't mean to mention a competitor. Sorry.

Bill Shufelt44:45

But uh I iterate all those things. I was like an early kombucha drink a lot. And so anyway, I was on this like health and wellness curve I think ahead of the game. But what my wife really connected was she was like that work you did on yourself like getting yourself sober and like doing the honest work and like then helping other people get sober and like the impact that felt to you. She's like if you created that beverage category that's missing out there, it wouldn't just be one-on-one interaction.

It would be tens of thousands of people, then hundreds of thousands of people, then millions of people. She's like, "You might go from having a financial career where, you know, you're making money for us and we're taking nice vacations to positively impacting like literally hundreds of millions of people a year. And more importantly, when our kids turn 21, they won't feel the pressures you felt. There will be a menu you can open up and they can drink non-alcoholic or whatever in the same setting with no stigma." And so my wife connected all those dots like us talking and like business planning excitingly.

And that I would say is where you go from like a really great salary and secure career but stare down this once in a-lifetime mission and chance to make a positive impact on like literally potentially hundreds of millions of people. And that was like the moment where she sat me down and we had that conversation after two years of business planning and didn't sleep for two nights, quit my job and have never looked back. Yeah. And like as you said, like did not make a dollar for three years.

Like thank goodness the system is like

Set up for entpreneurs like the more money you lose like the safety net kind of catches you a little bit. Um, but I, you know, it's funny. I never once thought about going back to that career. Like even with no money, it was like the promise of the impact was like the most full my cup had ever been.

Bill Shufelt47:58

Yeah. I mean, there there's so many analoges to life where like the easier something is, it's almost bad for you. And like if you get no practice, if you're not sharpening your sword, if you're not like if you don't need to train, you're going to get smoked when you actually get to the game.

Bill Shufelt48:31

And so I I remember like I was working with our outside counsel who's now our GC. He's like incredible friend and one of the most impactful people on this journey. But I remember I had this 96 page white paper on what non-alcoholic beer could be in this country. And I was like, "Okay, I'll be back in two weeks with like the money raised." And he kind of laughed. And I I knew a lot of people both from my childhood and from my career that I I thought this was going to be the easiest round in the world to fill.

I thought I'd reach out to like 15 people and, you know, the round would fill up. And I I very quickly learned that even if people are worth a lot of money, like angel checks are typically very small. like there's a you know you don't have to do too many angel investments to learn that like it's a very long time horizon and high fail rate. So people had clearly researched that and looked into it more than me. But a lot of like I had some friends and some colleagues who were like immediate yeses but it it was a much narrower scope of immediate yeses than I would have ever guessed.

And like I you know money is weird. I didn't want it to affect friendships and stuff. So I I basically didn't go out to a lot of people and I I didn't follow up to if I gave someone the deck and talked to them about it. I I never followed up because like there's like an obligation of a friendship there and money that I didn't want to cross. And so

Ultimately like a very high amount of people I knew really well passed and you know around age 32 like a lot of people have moving parts in their life too. So certainly no judgments and I also wasn't following up with people. So, like a lot of people are like kind of like, "What the hell? You never followed up with me?" So, I I went through probably like 3 months and I'd racked up like 60 or 70 nos at this point, which to just like it like 60 or 70 is like a really it's really hard for people to like like put context to numbers like that.

But if you like one of those would be, you know, no one is like it's not like we're I'm working in the same building with these people. So I'd have to take like an hour train, get meet people on their schedule, which is almost always evening or morning before work, spend like an hour or two with people, and then you don't really hear back. And then so rinse and repeat that 60 times over a 3-month period. Some of them were groups of like eight people where, you know, I had a like in a few dinners in Fairfield County with like four, five, eight people at the dinners, all with significant means.

And I got skunked at a few of those dinners. Yeah. Um, which so it was really shocking to me. But then all of a sudden like it was mostly like one layer from people I knew well who had kind of passed would connect me to someone else.

Bill Shufelt51:11

Like a lot of people weren't like didn't understand non-alcoholic beer. Didn't like just couldn't imagine it in their life and had no perception of it. But I had lived it. But very often there was like some it was like such a shocking business model that they probably ended up talking about socially and a lot of those conversations led to like a really passionate inbound. And so all of a sudden 3 months in I started getting inbounds from people I I didn't know but had a decent reference to.

So all of a sudden the yes is starting to rack up really quickly. And I'm like kind of breezing over it. This was like an incredibly dark period of all nos. At the same time overlaying that I was getting rejected by um like I thought finding a partner to build the business with on the brewing side would be very easy and I was getting all nose on the brewing side too like literally hundreds of them before I met our incredible co-founder John. I'm crazy.

John was in New Mexico, but I was like, if I had even like the inkling of an enthusiastic potential conversation, like I had people reaching out from like Vermont who were like, you know, a college friend of mine talked to someone in Vermont who was actually really excited about it. And so I just pretend to have a meeting in Vermont. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to be up there next Wednesday anyway. Like, let's grab a coffee."

Bill Shufelt52:35

And I was just like desperate for like a slightly slight glimmer of hope.

Bill Shufelt52:40

But this group of connections ended up we ended up I did 120 meetings. Our angel round was 66 individuals. Incredible group of people, such great supporters, all really passionate about what we're doing. and I kept them up on the journey and became they became like a band of like super ambassadors for what we were doing.

Bill Shufelt53:04

Yeah. Originally the business plan said one so originally it was going to be much more capital light and I was going to try to do it out of my life savings. Me and my wife and my wife and I had kind of committed to

This is the amount of money we're going to put in the business. It was a significant part of our life savings and then this is what we're going to cut our family budget back to for three years. and we kind of just agreed to that and which is a huge sacrifice on her side. Like you you really cannot do this well without good household alignment. And

Bill Shufelt53:39

Yeah. And you got to have that support system too. It is so tough. Like I I would say after like three months of absolutely nothing positive going right, my brother like called the check-in and he was like, "Let's go skiing." He's like, "Let's go to the Pacific Northwest." And he like,

You know, I I think he paid for most of it. And we went for three days to the Pacific Northwest and like totally blew off steam and came back with a full head of energy. But yeah, ended up with this incredible angel investor group and like at the same time I'd gotten a lot of rejection and had like really sharpened how I talk about it too. Like I it had been a long time since I'd had to sell anything. Um, and so that was a really valuable experience for me too to get like, you know, when you pick up the phone at 72, there are 200 people picking up on the first ring on the other side like eager to help.

And you know, in in this business it, you know, there are no emails coming in any day really and unless you like sign up for a newsletter and no one's picking up the phone, no one's responding to emails, no one's taking your meetings. I, you know, one of the darkest visualizations was in the beginning, uh, my wife and I had hung this map up on the wall and put pins all over it.

There were all the business contacts we wanted to go see, like contract brewers, suppliers, things like that. And we were going to like fly around, rent cars, go to all these places, kind of see the country. We didn't have kids yet. And one by one, the pins came out of the map and like just the trip got cancelled. I had no leads, no meetings, anything. And it was like, yeah, there was like zero momentum or interest in non-alcoholic beer. And uh but that's where we started.

It was fun.

Bill Shufelt55:17

Along this journey, we got no meetings with contract brewers. And then I teamed up with John too, and we were kind of like working through the process and thinking we could probably do a lot better job at this on the quality side to like build it ourselves, own the quality, do everything ourselves. And like we were working on that thesis that was like a really pivotal decision

Bill Shufelt55:43

Yeah. And so most CPG goods are outsourced rightfully so like in the manufacturing like who wants to put the steel on the ground?

Bill Shufelt55:52

Bottling lines, packaging lines. These are really sophisticated robotic machines

Worth hundreds of thousands and tens of millions of dollars at scale. And so there are good networks to plug into for most CPG, but we were reinventing how non-alcoholic beer was made. You know, it was made previously with very industrialized processes. It was an only logger category. And we wanted to make really delicate, nuanced craft beer, non-alcoholic, and it just required a totally different approach and reinventing how it was made. And so we, you know, back in 2017 before this was a popular decision or like I think it's getting easier right now to like repatriate manufacturing.

We decided that we were going to put steel in the ground from day one. And that was a very unpopular decision with investors. Like investors do not want to see a a category that the entire TAM at the time was under $und00 million in the category. There had been no growth for decades. consumers were not asking for it. Nobody was working on it. There was no momentum in it. So, it was like kind of a very capital heavy approach to an uninvestable category. So, long story short, we ended up raising $3 million in in that first swing.

Yeah. And uh

Bill Shufelt57:29

Yeah. Along that path like we you know we're home brewing for like a good slug of the day.

And by the way, one quick thing.

Bill Shufelt57:35

I would say I was like a light beer logger guy in high school and then when I went to Middbury I fell in love with craft beer because like okay there was some of the amazing emerging craft brewers up around that area and plus like super local beer we could get on tap and plug it into our off-campus house kegarator and so fell in love there with craft beer.

Ironically craft beer was like not as accessible in New York City as Vermont after

But I still loved great beer great food. I had never brewed a batch of beer in my life. So like in that two years of business plan, I read every brewing textbook out there and had delusional confidence that I was like in the know on brewing and I immediately after like meeting John and getting more in the brewing community like gained an enormous respect for like the skills and the science of brewing. And you know I know the image of like brewers with beards and like people think they're just like tossing things in tanks.

It is incredibly precise and scientific and there is a ton of knowledge there.

Bill Shufelt58:50

Um yeah, so we were home brewing by day and we were lucky to have a long lead time like there this market was going nowhere. And

What facility were you using in the early days? Basically, my whole life savings got basically put to signing the lease on the warehouse in Stratford, Connecticut. It was like a 8,000 square foot warehouse. 10,000 total space. 2,000 was tap room. And then, you know, salaries and the first brewing equipment, you know, I was like fully committed money.

Bill Shufelt59:25

Yeah. Money spent, invested, both feet in from day one. And then uh that first as the beer started to taste good, you know, John and I working together for like six months, you know, the first 30 trials were like for the most part in John's eyes like pretty garbage. And we were trying a lot of different methods, working through the scientific method. And all of a sudden in like I think it was like batch 36 started to taste like pretty good.

And John was like, "This is starting to taste like real beer." And John was like of the extremely high quality standards of like he made me agree before we signed on and like started getting going that I would never force him to like launch a product unless he fully signed off that we're all the way there on quality.

And he wanted it to be a totally uncompromising beer relative to the highest craft beer standards from day one. He's like, "We're going to make no progress in changing people's minds about this unless it's truly great beer." The fact that I knew it was such great beer gives you such great confidence to go out and try to get that beer in people's hands because if you're jamming like contract brewed mediocre beer into people's hands, it's not going to work and the trend's not going to start.

And there have been over 300 companies come into this category since Athletic started. And there have been all sorts of companies cycling out and failing. Like that is because almost all of them have not built a brewery, don't have any brewers, and certainly don't have John or our brewing team.

Bill Shufelt1:00:57

Yeah. Profit and PR brings opportunist for sure. Yeah. And it's uh you know there's a lot of cardboard facads standing up in front of absolutely nothing. Like I can't tell you how many times you know this paragraph on the side of our can has been copied word for word on a website. like it's insanity.

And you know, people get the venture funding and copy this and throw it up and ask someone else to make it and they're like, "We're the next Athletic."

But behind us is like we're we're now up to $130 million invested in our breweries. We have 300 full-time teammates. We've been investing a ton of money, just as much money in brand and marketing. So, like the depth of what we're doing in every vertical of our business is like so much deeper than the average CPG company. And I can't tell you how unpopular that was with investors, too. But like, at the same time, as you start to get to scale and really get rolling, the economics start to look pretty good on that, too.

Bill Shufelt1:03:13

Our angel investor group was really hard to come by.

It took a lot of failure to get there but they you know we had this incredible group of angels and private investors who right around that time and shortly after met. Um, and most of those were inbound people who discovered our beer and loved it and were like wanted to have a conversation. And I couldn't believe some of the names that popped into my inbox really early there. Um, you know, some incredible family offices. Uh, Blake Mikoski, the founder of Tom Shoes, cold emailed me, who I'd really looked up to his Tom Shoes company.

Um, and the double bottom line impact of that business. Um, which you know, Athletic has been a double or triple bottom line business from day one. Um, you know, we wanted to ingrain that in from day one and not just be like a ESG check the box. Like we have one of the biggest corporate environmental programs in the country. Beyond that, like so we had this incredible passionate group that I was keeping up to speed. It wasn't like I would go off and do my thing in silence for a year and come back in a panic like

We got to raise more money. I was writing monthly investor updates to take them along on the journey because I knew there was high probability of failure here and I wanted this journey to be impactful for them and I wanted them to have the talking points to go to their friends and be proud of Athletic and

So I wrote monthly investor updates along the way and then when it came time to raise money I'd be like you know and like the what's next section is like hey we're going to start to go out to like more institutional investors and you know try to raise like one of the things uh so we built this what we thought it was the perfect brewery. It was 10,000 square feet. It was our dream equipment. John and I knew every inch of that brewery, every piece of equipment, everything.

It like we poured our heart and soul into that construction project. And we had such a lean team. It was the first non-alcoholic brewery and tap room in the country. You know, I would work the tap room on weekends plus do events. You know, another credit to my wife. Um she'd be like, "How many people came to the tap room?" And I'd be like, "Please don't ask." Um but uh we did have people come from like all over the country too in that like I would say oh we're about to go out to institutional investors and our investors would be like wait like

Bill Shufelt1:05:53

Like I'm really excited about this. I know I made my angel in check but now I'm ready to do my like real check.

Bill Shufelt1:05:58

And every time I would go out to go to raise institutional capital I'd actually just be way overs subscribed from our internal team. that private investor group took us very far and gave us good leverage as we you know we we did get to a scale where our our second brewery was a more distressed asset in San Diego. So we took that over and put another like $10 million into it and like that helped us well so that brewery just to finish the story we had put our heart and soul into this brewery and it's so expensive and timeconuming to build your own manufacturing and then we outgrew that brewery in 10 months.

Oh my god. And like at first the sales weren't great on the world and then they just started to go exponential. And coming around to that first full summer on the market, we'd outgrown the brewery. And

Bill Shufelt1:06:49

Yeah. We thought a brewery that would last us 5 years, we'd outgrown. So our original fermenttor were 40 barrel.

Bill Shufelt1:06:55

We bought three used 100 barrel fermenters and dropped them in with a crane in June to try to meet summer demand. And we outgrew that a month. in a month and like the business is just going exponential. It's available national on e-commerce at this time which is the first like DTOC beer brand ever. Um, and so we were off and running and sprinting. And so I started looking around at breweries around the country that, you know, we didn't have time to build something big from the ground up.

So we had to buy an existing craft brewery. And plus, since we had launched nash on e-commerce, we were shipping a bunch of beer all the way across the country to California and the Pacific Northwest. And

Bill Shufelt1:07:36

Yeah. The the cost of of the shipping was more than anything in the beer. And so we're losing money on every case we sold. And so our next brewer is in San Diego.

Bill Shufelt1:08:35

Momentum and scarcity and I I can't tell you how many people passed on an intro call from that first round and then came up later at conferences and stuff and nothing against them like no of course

I understand how the investing world goes and rightfully so. We were taking a very capital intensive approach to a market with no momentum

Bill Shufelt1:09:46

Thank you. I I mean I learned so much along the way. Had great people around the table helping me too. Like unbelievable mentorship. Um you know some of our existing board members have been on the board for six plus

Bill Shufelt1:10:06

Yeah. I was like hedge fund guy with CFA and I was like, "Oh, I know everything about finance."

That operating operating model I drew up, that operating model was for running a brewery at 100% utilization.

Yeah. which was one of the toughest lessons to learn is that in a business with any element of growth, let alone 200 300% year-over-year growth, that brewery is never going to be running at 100%. It's going to be growing at it's going to be 20, 30, 60, 90% utilized and then you're going to be into the next one that's 10% utilized and like

So evening out those capital cliffs too. building manufacturing is so expensive and it's so rapid where so we had this incredible group of angel investors who are still supporting us to this day basically a lot of them and then we I did have the luxury of getting to meet institutional investors over that time and build real relationships and almost none of our investors have invested in the round when I met them or that time frame it's always been like a one or two year getting to know you and then you get an unbelievable partner who's seen you execute, seen you do what you say you're going to do a couple times, and then we've been able to bring in incredible institutional partners along our private investors, too, who help us do those rapid scales.

So, yeah, first it was Alliance Consumer Growth, which is a great more like small to midsize consumer private equity fund. They were involved in some unbelievable stories like Shake Shack, for example. But like a firm like that helped us scale up that San Diego brewery to being like, you know, one of the biggest craft breweries on the West Coast. And then uh basically a year later, we started building what a brewery that was about 100 times the output of that original Stratford Brewery um a few miles up the road in Milford, Connecticut.

And so, you know, envisioning a 500,000 barrel brewery, 150,000 foot space, all the capital in the ground, like just to put it into context, like even the cement, like the day the cement was poured for just phase one was 37 cement trucks coming in, you know, these tanks, it was 110 shipping containers of stuff arriving at the brewery. Like, these are real capital projects. And so we eventually have also grown into great capital partners who've helped support us like Alliance Consumer Growth, Kirk, Dr. Pepper's been an amazing partner.

Uh and now General Atlantic as well.

Bill Shufelt1:12:31

And along the way if like if you think so we're doing like hard to implement things very expensive and in the backdrop there are multiple economic cycles going on here too

The week we signed our lease in San Diego you know we all lived in Connecticut at the time COVID broke out

And we had the COVID cycle then we were building the Connecticut brewery during the international shipping crisis um

2022 interest rates went vertical like just like 5% % in 3 months or something like that. Like I know 5% interest rate hikes on in 3 months has effects in every corner of the economy. It especially has effects if you're running a manufacturing business with a lot of exponentially growing working capital. And then you know 2022 had a pretty bad recession also. And then you know 2024 there's interesting challenges too. But one of the things that emerged during this is we had built such a vertical company.

You know, my philosophy was always like, hire people full-time, give them a ton of opportunity, let people run with that opportunity, use as few agencies as possible.

Bill Shufelt1:13:44

Where most CPG is like 95% externalized.

Bill Shufelt1:13:49

We were 95% internalized. And so when things like COVID hit and stuff like John and I would get teams around the table, we'd do manuals, we'd figure out how it worked for us. and we were able to plow through these different economic cycles between our investors, our board, and how we were building the company ended up being like an unbelievable decision for us.

Bill Shufelt1:14:17

Um I it it's so hard when people ask like what are the moments you knew it was going to work? cuz there were like, you know, even like a month or two after we launched in Connecticut, I'm like in my Greenwich Whole Foods or like some of these local Whole Foods and looking at the shelf, I'm like, man, it's Sunday afternoon and that beer is still on the shelf. And so I'd like get it into the cart and I'd be like I'll be like, "People will discover it eventually." But one of the light bulbs went on to me was like, we have no marketing budget and nothing has changed on this non-alcoholic beer shelf in 30 years.

Why all of a sudden would there be a lot of people like checking out if something's new over there? Like when I stopped drinking, I looked at it once, realized it was like basically non-existent and like didn't look again. So I knew I had to go out to the world and bring those people to the store. And so I started every weekend and during the week setting up at like, you know, I I was the target customer. I didn't have to like go Google do a focus group like who do you think drinks this?

Like how are we going to brand it? Like like this company is my life. It is just like exuded in a can and imagery and ethos. So I went out to places I would be on weekends like hey trail half marathons, ultramarathons, the biggest, you know, marathons in the country doing gorilla stuff. Um but anywhere within a six mile radius of Connecticut, I started to go out and hand out hundreds if not thousands of beers a weekend, set up a tent, try to get people to talk to me.

That's where it started to click. I would say if you ask me a single moment where like I knew it was going to work is like when you put the beer in someone's hand who was like a total non-considerer but I would get them to try a beer

And you like see them like take a sip like half-hearted but then like they start to lock in their eyes start to go wide and there was this like magic in realizing the taste and I saw those interactions like you know on a given weekend at first it was like I'd have like some breakthroughs and then I'd start to see that like a hundred times on a weekend and I'd know that they would go out and tell other people about it and be like, "Hey, you got to try this.

It is shocking." I would say that's when I knew we were going to make it is when I started to see the individual reactions to it. And that's when it started to happen, too. Like it just I like I think those people and like word of mouth between our investors, our ambassadors, people I met at races. I did 75 races that summer. So

Oh, wow. you know, I must have driven 100,000 people maybe to to stores, but it was high velocity. And then at the end of that year, we brought on five sales people to like help me cover New England. Like originally I was covering New England.

Bill Shufelt1:16:57

Basically, all of them are still with us to this day. Have grown nicely with the company. But then they had the energy I had too. And like that's when it just started to go exponential.

Bill Shufelt1:18:30

We hear those stories uh you know I I started the business for personal impact like and that fulfillment and yeah it's it's really tough like it you know it I think the key element is passion for what you're doing cuz like entrepreneurship is so tough like there are no days off. You go home for dinner on Friday night and your wife's like do you want to watch a movie? I'm like, "Sorry, I got to do the accounting." And you know, you end up being up till 2 am trying to like figure out what's going on with the accounting and like

Bill Shufelt1:18:59

Why QuickBooks isn't reconciling and like it just trying to make

Bill Shufelt1:19:05

And I had like every advantage coming into that, too. But then I'd be like, "And I have to wake up at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow to be like the first one at this race and like set up and

And she'd be like, "Okay, see you on Sunday." Like, and it is. And then the weekdays are even more of a grind. But what did fill me up was those like you just mentioned your wife and your personal experience like those inbounds I would get where people were like I thought I had lost social connection forever like I hadn't watched sports with my friends or my father like people would be like I hadn't watched a baseball game with my dad in 20 years after he stopped drinking and I brought over a six-pack for athletic and it was like like these moments of people are like reconnection or you know alcoholics who've been trying to stopped drinking for 30 years with no success.

Finally, at clicking, like those emails like fill the cup right back up and you just it's kind of like anything if like if the passion's there, anything's easy. But like, you know, in this day and age, like burnout is such a thing and like people are like complaining about burnout. But like honestly, I think a lot about that is is like a I think it's like a lot of work from home. Like we see by far the most like burnout and like people who are just working from home and don't have like work community like colleagues to share the experience with.

But also when you don't have like shared purpose and passion and like impact into what you're doing you're like there's no why. Like work is incredibly tiring and stressful and empty. But I I found I could plow through anything with this like passion and like I just I wanted to be working on athletic all the time.

Bill Shufelt1:20:58

I would say there were all sorts of losses. Like I thought I was like putting together this like great final four event at the tap room and stuff and I'd like blow my whole like Friday preparing for it, the weekend activating it and like no one would show up and like that is a huge hit on resources when like when the company's resources are basically my time and you know ju I don't mean to make this about me like John is basically running the breweries by himself at this point too

Which is John has like we have very parallel heroes and learning journeys along this whole process. us and all of our teammates that joined us too. Like all of our early teammates were interpreneurs and did such an amazing job. But like one of the biggest wins then was, you know, something I didn't even have a hand in at all. Like all of a sudden like I noticed our social media was going crazy and I was like like what is going on? And then just like my phone starts blowing up with pictures of, you know, the seventime CrossFit champion uh Matt Frasier had just posted drinking an Athletic on his couch.

It was it was an ad for another brand, but he was drinking athletic and uh you know he he was like just the the pinnacle of like elite fitness and you know someone that people look to for fitness advice, fitness hacks, everything and it just absolutely blew up on social and you know Matt is an like obviously we reached out to him and built a relationship but he is an incredible guy him and his wife and they were very incredible long I'm brand ambassadors. He's a great human.

Um, so that was one thing that like, you know, the universe just dropped in our lap and there have been so many things like that as well.

Bill Shufelt1:23:17

You know, you got to be out there increasing your surface area, too, and like

Saying yes to a lot of things, being in a lot of rooms, and you never know where someone else is on their journey, too. like a lot of the good relationships I've built with other founder friends or people like those people just turned out to be really early on their journey too. It's been fun to grow together and those have been really fruitful relationships. I'm a big believer of responding to as much as I can authentically

Being out there as much as I can um and putting myself out there. I think I I might be misattributing this, but Mark Andre talks about like how luck's not going to come knock on your door while you're watching Netflix. like

Luck is going to come when you say yes to have pizza with an interesting group of people who have a fun idea. Like that was his example. But like my equivalent of that is like you know you can go to a conference and just sit there and listen and not talk to anyone or you can put yourself in a place of discomfort and talk to everyone. Or when you're standing line at the airport like my wife hates this but like I talk to the people in front and behind me at the airport.

I'm like oh what do you do? Like where are you coming from? Where are you going? I can't tell you how many interesting people like one of our biggest sports partners I sat next to on a plane. I was like, "Oh, are you with them?" And like or no, I didn't even know who they were with asked like, "Why are you going to San Diego?" And but like just putting yourself out there and talking to people and Darren Rall has been one of our best investors from a very early time.

Bill Shufelt1:24:44

Oh, incredible. And uh like just incredible human. And the way I met him was, you know, he was on a panel at a conference I was at. And after like that panel ended, I like scooted right up the aisle and I was the first one there ready to shake his hand when I got off and like made a joke. And he asked, "What are you working on?" And I said, "I'm making modern beer like or beer for the modern adult basically." Yeah.

And I was like, "It's going to be bigger than any beer brand you know." Um, and he's like, "Tell me more." And like you got to put yourself out there.

Bill Shufelt1:25:27

Just step by step. You know, I'm a big believer of, you know, driving down the middle lane at 65 miles an hour. It's like it I mean probably big parallels to your journey, but if you just like show up and do the work every day. I think one of my superpowers is it's not like I I'm not like a social media affixionado who's going to have these breakthrough social media moments or not. It's not going to be these like huge singular spikes. Like our collective story at Athletic is just showing up and doing the thing every day.

And I think one of my biggest superpowers both back in my finance career and now is no matter how tough a day is, I can clear the windshield wipers at night and start the next day with like a full fresh head of steam like nothing happened. Like I didn't take a brick to the forehead the day before.

And you know, I'm just a big optimist and show up every day, do the thing, try as hard as I can. And that is like relentless and exhausting to compete against. And if you're just there every day doing it and I make sure I knock off like three key things every day, that is an unbelievable amount of progress in a year. And you know, take care of myself and take care of my family. And so that's a very long way of saying that like trying to compound to some really big goals here.

I take a lot of inspiration from some of the great brands out there. Like I think Red Bull's an incredible success story. Basically envisioned a whole new category. like energy drinks basically didn't exist before that. They reimagined the marketing and reimagined the product of what a category could be and just stuck at it for 30 years. And you know, it wasn't a bunch of like 100% growth years. It was like 10 15% growth years. And that's what we're trying to do at Athletic. Like we've been talking about how hard the Boulder was to get from 0% of beer to 2% a beer.

And that was so expensive. So hard. so many onetoone contacts and handshakes and convincing people, but we've seen well beyond where 2% so non-alcoholic beer is 2% of all beer in this country at this point, which is a a nice trajectory and most people in the industry projected to end up at 3 or 4% in a in the long term. I look at common sense like people are not drinking alcohol 99% of the time. There are so many occasions out there and so much there's way more opportunity for non-alcoholic beer than there is alcoholic beer.

And I think there's going to be a flipping at some point. But that being said, we've already seen almost every mainstream beer channel in this country from the biggest grocery stores to the biggest mass retailers pass 3, four, 5% of beer. So I know it's gone very quickly past 5%. But now all the leading edge retailers are starting to pass 10% of beer. like all the healthy healthy grow grocery stores and stuff and we had a national retailer pass 20% of beer last year.

Bill Shufelt1:28:17

I think the leading edge of this and where it's going is going to be you know it's that famous quote like people underestimate one year or people overestimate one year underestimate 10.

Bill Shufelt1:28:27

And I think where we turn around in 10 years like by the time this like our generation has so much baggage around drinking people turning 21 right now have absolutely no loyalty to alcohol.

Bill Shufelt1:29:07

Yeah.

Bill Shufelt1:29:09

Yeah. And it's not like I I'm out there to like create options and give people options cuz like I had no options and in my prior career like nobody had any options to like be moderate and take that path and all I wanted to do was create the path not necessarily like vilify the alcohol industry or anything given that like in today's corporate world or today's world of everyone's got a phone and a video like in their pocket like the way 20 years ago at the like earlier days of our financial careers if you showed up on a Thursday and Friday and you weren't hung over at work.

Yeah.

It was like you were you took a half day. Basically, if you show up in today's corporate world hung over, like it's it's like what are you doing? Like this guy's a total embarrassment. And so

I think that image of alcohol in the younger generation is going to change so fast. Yeah.

Bill Shufelt1:30:04

I'm trying to get back to like more structured races and goals. I've been, you know, I've been kind of like a garage animal for like the last, like I do my like one long zone two outside a week usually and then I'm like a garage animal outside of that. Like a few like hit workouts, a few weight workouts, treadmill sprints, stuff like that. But I want to put some exciting things on the calendar, whether that's Spartan races, high rocks,

Or I I tend to knock out like a trail half marathon at least a year, which keeps my like zone 2 series on the weekends. But um I'd like to put some bigger things on the radar. And

I've had this uh 38 mile mountain race on the radar for a while. I think probably not in a baby year, but the year after that, I'd love to hit that. So yeah, I want to get some more structured things back on the radar. I don't think I'm in at least yet in the world of GOI marches and stuff like that, but I think in five or 10 years maybe the two of us put something really big on the calendar.

Bill Shufelt1:31:10

I remember that phone call. I mean, we hadn't known each other that long and it had to be in our first three phone calls together. Like we we connected like lightning in our first conversation and then you're like, "Bill, I'm I'm trying to get into this race last minute. Need a few sponsors. I'm going to win it."

That was incredible.

Bill Shufelt1:31:46

Yeah. the amount of people who have reached out and been like, "We're going to ride across the country. We're going to row across the ocean." And like you never hear about them again. And like I start googling, I'm like, "Did they die in the ocean?" Or like, "What happened?"

Bill Shufelt1:33:21

Oh yeah. when you when you stop paying a million dollars in commissions a year, like like who still checks in? That's exactly right. Who still texts you about sports and stuff and like car through some amazing friendships from that world to present day when you know people have no skin in the game and that that's where it's really meaningful for sure. Yeah.

Bill Shufelt1:33:58

Oh, thank you so much. It's it's totally mutual the way you inspire people to do hard things and like I I think your book's going to have an enormous amount of impact.