The Outworker
The relationship with oneself is the most important to develop, but the easiest to neglect. These conversations will hopefully allow you to develop that relationship.
The Outworker
#031 - Bill Shufelt - Living With Purpose & Building A Movement With Athletic Brewing CEO & Co-Founder
Bill Shufelt, co-founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing, shares his journey from quitting a successful hedge fund career to betting on himself and transforming the non-alcoholic beer industry. We discuss how Bill's personal decision to stop drinking evolved into a mission-driven business that's changing social norms and consumer habits. Discover the challenges of launching in an untapped market, the innovative strategies behind Athletic Brewing's success, and how aligning business with personal values is driving the rapid rise of the non-alcoholic movement.
Timestamps:
00:00 Life Before Athletic Brewing
01:31 The Journey of Quitting Alcohol
07:07 The Birth of Athletic Brewing
10:30 Building a Business Plan
15:15 Quitting Job & Full Time on AB
19:26 The Advantage of Being an Outsider
24:58 Recognizing Potential
29:46 Building Brand with D2C
37:35 Not Anti Alcohol
43:26 Making NA Cool
46:10 Personal Wellness and Meditation Practices
49:53 The Impact of Energy on Parenting
52:08 Universe Conspiring in Our Favor
53:24 The Future of Athletic Brewing
Thank you so much for listening. I truly appreciate your time and support. Let me know what you thought of the episode and what you would like to see in the future. Any feedback would be awesome. Don't forget to subscribe for more exciting content on YouTube, and leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever platform you are listening on.
Connect with us below:
Instagram: Tim Doyle | The Outworker
Youtube: The Outworker
What’s up Outworkers. Bill Shufelt, co-founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing, shares his journey from quitting a successful hedge fund career to betting on himself and transforming the non-alcoholic beer industry. We discuss how Bill's personal decision to stop drinking evolved into a mission-driven business that's changing social norms and consumer habits. Discover the challenges of launching in an untapped market, the innovative strategies behind Athletic Brewing's success, and how aligning business with personal values is driving the rapid rise of the non-alcoholic movement.
Tim (00:06.67)
There's a strong mission behind your life with athletic brewing, but before you ever had the thought or the idea about that, what do you think your mission in life was?
Bill @ Athletic (00:21.743)
honestly don't think I had much of a mission in life. Sadly, think athletic gave me a lot of purpose. I would say I'd been somewhat drifting in life and even at times I might have hit fast forward if given the option. Difficult years, stressful work periods. I think there was a lot of emptiness there. It definitely like working for life and like mostly working for the future.
which is kind of a sad way to be. like since founding athletic, it's definitely been living for the present and loving the present, which has been a huge change for me.
Tim (01:00.802)
I know you quit drinking about 11 years ago, but before that, what did your relationship with alcohol used to look like?
Bill @ Athletic (01:09.303)
Yeah. So, 11 years ago, earlier this week. So, just past that. and honestly, the best decision I've ever made and not as a necessarily, not as a judgment on alcohol, as a judgment on like alcohol as a fit for me. And, as a, like the key areas in my life that I was really, I guess like going back to when I decided to stop drinking, I was about to turn 30.
I was six months from getting married. That's a point where, you know, passing a key age plus like a real life change where I was thinking about the future, what kind of husband, what kind of potential parent I wanted to be. And I was honestly drinking and socializing all the time and working so hard that I was thinking about like what's important to me. And I imagine myself being a much better husband and father without any alcohol in my life. I was having a lot of trouble finding where that line was.
And then a more productive professional in my financial career without alcohol, better friend, family member, everything to my extended family, probably without alcohol and, how a healthier person who's going to live a lot longer, be a lot healthier. so like on every key element of my life, I realized alcohol was a ceiling on those things. before that alcohol was, you know, I think there was like a relative amount of
like some good alcohol brought to my life, know, socializing, networking, things like that. I was living such a stressful life that like I'm thankful for those like fun moments where I was like with friends and everything. And, but I was also very social and I had a real problem like just having one drink or being moderate or calling it a night. was always up for being
the last one out, I was very social and I loved that. so, inevitably like drank too much, too many nights of the week, I had three or four work dinners a week plus social things. so, overall was, had trouble drawing where that line was. I honestly think if athletic had existed at that point, I actually probably wouldn't have had a problem with alcohol. Because when I stopped drinking, I really didn't,
Bill @ Athletic (03:35.298)
So I'm kind of rambling, but like when I stopped drinking, I really didn't have any trouble like avoiding alcohol. Like I really had almost no temptation. was such an easy decision for me, except when I was in those social situations, there wasn't an offering there. So like, I think I would have had no problem going out and having one drink had there been other offerings that I could hold in my hand and have fun and hang out with. The problem was there was no option to be social without alcohol. And so inevitably then I would have.
two to ten drinks every single time I went out.
Tim (04:09.464)
Do you think alcohol played more of a role in your personal life or your professional life?
Bill @ Athletic (04:16.623)
I think it was about equal, some positives and some negatives. And I think one of the most important realizations for me is that the alcohol as a functional ingredient itself didn't serve me at all. It was just, I loved being in the moments and alcohol actually had nothing to do with those moments.
Like when you walk into a bar and you first see a friend or a family member, you're so excited to see, that's not like alcohol having, making that moment fun. It is just like how great that person, that moment is. And like, when you watch your sports team win, very often you have an alcohol drink in your hand, but like that win is just as sweet with a non-alcoholic good drink. so,
So very often I thought alcohol was like a glue to a lot of the fun moments in my life, whether those were personal or professional and like, so personal for fun and whatever work was networking and like, building my network, like working with colleagues and analysts and idea dinners and stuff outside of work. but at the same time it,
I realized in both the alcohol actually didn't have anything to do with it. And then the detractions were also very similar. So personally, it's like very easy to get over served or not feel great or not have as good quality time with people if anyone is over served. then professionally, like even one to two drinks affect sleep. You miss workouts. You're not as sharp. You don't do work when you get like, so once I stopped drinking, I would go out to a great work dinner.
and then come home and have a completely clear head and often do some of my best work in the day at night and be totally locked in. If you go out and have two drinks at options off the table and you don't sleep as well, and then often you're hung over the next day and have a less productive day at work. And so it's kind of this like vortex where when I stopped drinking, I was like, this is like a virtuous cycle. I feel great. I'm more productive. I'm working out better. Can still do everything I love and just don't need to deal with this distraction.
Tim (06:30.22)
Yeah, I think that's an important point that you made about how it's not the alcohol that we truly want it. You know, it's the alcohol that's a bridge to the environment and the surroundings that we have. That's what we truly crave. So you make the decision that you're not going to, you're going to stop drinking. How long did it take after that moment for you to have the realization and the experience of
Bill @ Athletic (06:45.599)
Mm-hmm.
Tim (06:58.904)
You know, there really aren't any other good non-alcoholic beverages in the market.
Bill @ Athletic (07:05.283)
Yeah. Well, I will say I'm not necessarily like the most self-aware person and I'm really glad to have great, like an incredible wife who I knew for 13 years before we got married and...
knows me incredibly well. And so she helps provide a lot of reflection and then great colleagues in my old career and friends who I when I like, so she helped me come to this decision. Then when I told colleagues, I was like, you know, I don't think alcohol is serving me personally or professionally, I'm going to cut it out and like, would love you guys to help support that decision. And they're like, you should talk to this person, this person, this person and like people in the room.
that I really respected were really helpful in helping me connect those next steps, which made it really obvious to me. so that like, like some education there, but like it, it was like almost immediate for me that I was like, this is like a permanent decision and I'm going down this path. it was very hard though, because there were no options. so I, it was almost immediate.
I had no change in cadence of like stopping drinking and going to bars and restaurants still three plus nights a week. So I had no problem being in a sports bar and not drinking except for like how bad the options are. It's like, I'm here, I love to spend money, have something delicious and it wasn't there. And so that was like kind of obvious to me in the beginning, but like I...
I had never ever fashioned myself as an entrepreneur and would never think I was qualified to potentially even think about meeting that product need. I just started griping about it to people and being like, how are there 10,000 craft breweries and no one has made an amazing non-alcoholic beer yet. And then I tried to order them from all over the globe and found out that it, it, I would say.
Bill @ Athletic (09:05.831)
The act like voicing the idea to my wife took 15 months after I stopped drinking. but I was definitely griping about it a lot in that period.
Tim (09:16.91)
Yeah, I know your wife played an integral part in cultivating that excitement for you about your ideas with athletic brewing. But what I also appreciate and like most about your journey is that you didn't just jump right into this idea. It was very methodical at the start where you originally had the idea in 2014 and then from December 2014 to December 2016, you spent that time building out a business plan.
What did the work and the process look like for building out that?
Bill @ Athletic (09:51.95)
Yeah. So as like as a backdrop, I had a very viable long-term economic job that, you know, I found it intellectually challenging and I liked the people I worked with. so I was
on the path of a career. I wouldn't necessarily say like brought me huge fulfillment, but it was like a great economic career that no one leaves that firm. And so it just never crossed my mind. But that being said, I dreaded work. I was definitely like working for the rest of my life, like everything outside of work. And for the first time in my life, was
It was like one of those things where it's like a school project you absolutely fell in love with and wish would never end. And I would find myself on the weekends or at nights like working on the frame of athletic brewing that had a placeholder name at the time. And I would absolutely lose myself in time. And I would like be reading brewing textbooks and be trying to solve this really difficult problem or working on the potential future financial modeling and like thinking about construction and like what equipment we needed and like.
Who would I want to work with? And all the different challenges of all the different parts of the business and educating myself were so like exhilarating. Like time would just fly by and all of a sudden it would be midnight and I'd have to go to sleep. And then I'd just wake up at four o'clock the next morning and start working on it before work. And it was like this energy for a project I'd never had before. But that being said, it was an incredibly dumb financial move to like...
leave the job I had to like take this chance. And I think also part of what happened over that time too is like my journey kept going on as like someone who was like learning a lot about themselves, my health. I was, when I, so when I stopped drinking in 2013, it was like very often, probably five nights a week, I'd have at least one or two drinks. And like that dims the lights to some extent. And
Bill @ Athletic (12:04.047)
When I stopped drinking, I had this intellectual curiosity in the evenings that I hadn't had since I was like a teenager. And I started like, just like reading a lot more books and like watching educational YouTubes on different topics all of a sudden. And like, it was like the intellectual lights had gone back on in my life. And so I found myself on this like personal improvement journey on both like health, intellect, fitness, relationships, career.
There's this virtual circle. so I got a lot more passionate about like my own personal improvement during that time too. And I also helped a few other people connect the dots and make similar choices in their own life. Like from different family members to close friends. And that work was really rewarding to me. So I was doing the like actual economic or not economic, like the fully well-rounded business planning of athletic brewing.
but also I had this personal journey going on where I became more and more passionate about kind of like the health and productivity of the country in a way. I thought by like when, before I stopped drinking, so 10 years ago, there were no options if you wanted to go out and be social and be at bars and restaurants and not drink. was like, it was like, if you were, if you were enjoying those experiences.
It was alcohol is the path and I wanted to make it just a choice. Like I'm not saying anything necessarily against alcohol. I'm just saying people now have a really exciting choice. And I thought by making a choice, I could have any untold impact on the health and productivity of the country and so many people's lives just by making an option available. And when like that realization hit me, like probably a year and a half into business planning is when
It just went to the totally next level and I was at the door on my job pretty quickly after that.
Tim (14:00.782)
Your wife again. Yeah. Plays in its real part. She's the one who pushes you to quit your job at the hedge fund point 72. And you've said that you had three years of expenses budgeted so you could go all in on focusing on athletic brewing. So take me back to those first days. You, you wake up, you just quit your job and it's like, all right, day one, like this is what I'm working on. What did that beginning look like?
Bill @ Athletic (14:06.029)
Yep.
Bill @ Athletic (14:28.628)
Yeah. Yeah, it's, so it was a pretty dramatic decision to quit. all my colleagues were super supportive. and then all of a sudden I went from waking up with like,
like 500 emails a day to waking up with no contact to anyone. And then not only that, like my phone and I went from a world where I'd have probably thousands of emails a day and 200 brokers covering our desk, calling all day to a world where I was getting absolutely no inbound information or like contact or anything. And not only that, when I reached out to people,
I mostly did not get any responses also. So I was of course, extremely excited to get going and jumped right in. And there was like no structure at all to what I was doing next, which was a weird feeling. And so I like started working on refining the business plan. like taking the plans I'd been working on and putting them in and
actual document and plan and pitch and then a structure of what I wanted the next like three years to look like in terms of building the foundation of the business. And then I started to think about like how to actually make the beer. And so I was like, we're going to contract brew. like, so I, I had done the research on all these contract brewers and put dots all over a map that I hung up on my wall and
me and my wife were planning this grand road trip where we're going to visit all these contract brewers. And the assumption in my mind was like, everyone's open for business and I'm just going to like choose who I want to work with. And so we had like planned this whole grand road trip where I was going to visit all these contract brewers. And I actually only got one phone call meeting and then that was a very quick no. And so, but like no other meetings, no need for a road trip.
Bill @ Athletic (16:29.677)
So that was like very much a dead end. And I was like, okay, like I'm going to maybe try to find a more technical brewing partner before I really like take many more next steps. And that ended up being way harder than I would have thought also. really I, I went from a world where every outbound phone call I made got picked up on the first ring and like, like, like the world was like so responsive to me and I
I was an executor and an operations person. I was not a salesperson whatsoever. And I was really putting myself out there, cold calling people, going to conferences, trying to educate people from the ground up on this. And there was absolutely no interest. So was hundreds of no's from brewers also. And so I eventually, over a course of five months, got to...
our co-founder John, who had reached out from a job board posting I'd done. And thank goodness for John, because he was like the first person out of hundreds who like really understood the idea and what I was trying to achieve. And so like real credit to him. But those first six months were incredibly bleak and...
looking back, like I had so much fun doing it. Like I never once questioned what I was doing and should I go back? I had really burnt the boats in many ways. And I, I was going to give myself two to three years at this no matter what. it, it, looking back on that with reflection, it, should have been even so much darker than it was. Like I was like literally in an alley with no options and no one talking to me.
Tim (18:17.742)
How do you think being an amateur rather than being a beverage professional already within the industry, how do you think that played to your advantage?
Bill @ Athletic (18:27.811)
I think in many ways it's a huge advantage. So in an established category, you'd probably want to be coming in as like with knowledge of it. If you're going to jump right in and compete on a competitive category against existing frameworks and dynamics and distribution systems and stuff, it's potentially better to have a lot of that industry experience before you get out there and start making expensive, inefficient mistakes. But like where we were.
And the resistance that was going to come to the category, it was really good. We came in with a more of an outsider's perspective. We would have never launched the brand on e-commerce had I been in the industry for 20 years, which ended up being like an enormous data and trial advantage in the industry. And then, so I think bring outsider perspectives and more importantly, like just not knowing how hard it was going to be.
So like a lot of the people that had said no to me to join the team, I think we're coming with a really well supported like knowledge base of how difficult the endeavor was going to be. think coming in with, you know, delusional optimism probably served me very well because it was like just learning every lesson along the way and I was in it for the long haul. And so I plenty of time to do it. Of course we were moving fast, but
I think it served me very well. you know, a lot of industries are very sleepy. And if people work in an industry for their whole career, it's a big echo chamber. And it can be very disruptive when people who are ambitious come in from the outside with big intentions to grow it.
Tim (20:14.232)
Being naive can definitely be a benefit in many ways. think the hardest part of anything is that starting point where you're at a deadweight position and you're just trying to break through that wall and actually feel like you're in the game. How long into working on athletic brewing, you mentioned finding your co-founder, John, how long into...
starting this, did it start to feel like, all right, this isn't just an idea anymore, but now I got some pieces in place to actually start building this thing.
Bill @ Athletic (20:48.749)
Yeah, it's so funny and we had, I don't think we've had like total unwavering faith in how big this trend is going to be even from
pre-launch. And I think we knew so strongly like inside ourselves that like this was such an unmet need in the world and such a blue ocean opportunity that we were really thinking big right from the start. So I had already ordered all the very large brewing equipment with basically my whole life savings before I raised like a dollar of outside capital. And so that was a like, I'm all in.
this equipment is coming regardless, whether we like it or not. And I'd put deposits on construction and everything. So I was building a non-alcoholic brewery. then, but there was every part of our business was from a standstill. wasn't just production. It was like, there was no marketing for the category. So like,
When I first set up Sampling, I was talking to customers, like people had no idea about the category. Why would they ever consider drinking non-alcoholic beer? And then on a sales side and like distribution side, like there was no interest in like taking the products in, no interest in having more non-alcoholic beer at retail. So I had to really like literally walk into all those places and spend real time talking to decision makers, tasting them on the beer. And it was like one by one selling in person.
where like so much sales in the world these days is like scalable software oriented solutions. I was like literally driving around all over New England talking to people face to face. so, and then that's not even to like cover fundraising fundraising. We've got an incredible amount of nose. I did 120 meetings. There's a period of almost three months where I didn't get a single yes, which was like a pretty dark Valley.
Bill @ Athletic (22:58.135)
And so it was really like every vertical was getting going from now, but like, I I'm very thankful for all that now because I learned so much in that period coming from an industry outsider, but like having to have so many conversations, having to go so deep on my business and be so convincing on it. And it really also forced us to get to a point of quality on the product where, you know, there's a lot of products launching now where
they're launching into a very well established category where there's a lot of receptivity to try new things. So the hurdle is very low and a lot of these products are getting out the door without much thought at all on product quality. And like, because the hurdles are lower to these companies launching, a lot of companies have already come and gone because they haven't done the work that we did. I feel really thankful that we've done the work and we've earned some really tough education.
Tim (23:52.728)
Why do you think you had that feeling like you thought this was going to work? Was that more data analytics driven or was that kind of just a deep emotional gut feeling that you had?
Bill @ Athletic (24:04.282)
Definitely some of both. So I had my own personal lived experience where I was the target customer, normal, healthy, modern, busy adult who very obviously misses great tasting beer in most of my modern busy life. So that was a, and I was really confident that was just a very normal adult experience. Like most people want to be a little bit healthier, sleep a little better.
be a little more present and productive and this beer can help do that. So that was like super obvious in my mind. And then, so I started mentioning to friends and family and no matter how much people drink, like from people who barely ever drink to people who drink a ton, everyone was saying, yeah, that makes sense. Like I would drink that with some, some regularity.
where non-alcoholic beer was 0.3 % of the beer market, to have such a wide range of people say they would drink it with some regularity was very promising. And then I started running surveys. So, you know, I do all sorts of different iterations of surveys with thousands of people. And very often I was getting to numbers like 55 % of adults would drink non-alcoholic beer with some regularity, which is a higher percentage than if I'd asked
Do you drink alcoholic beer with regularity? like, but here, non-alcoholic beer was 0.3 % of the beer market and alcoholic beer was 99.7 % of the beer market. And I was just saying here, like, I think I'm the only one thinking about this absolutely enormous secret. And so that was like definitely a data driven insight. And then, but we didn't really see that play out in the world extremely fast. It was.
Even as we were launching, it was pushing the rock up the hill because it's great to be on the shelf at retailers. The problem is no one was walking to the non-alcoholic beer shelf looking for non-alcoholic beer because nothing had changed on that shelf in 50 years. So they had just stopped looking. It really required us like literally going and finding all those people in the world and bring them into the retailer. So I would say I sampled 75 events within the next three months after we launched.
Bill @ Athletic (26:23.043)
giving out hundreds of beers every weekend, talking to them about the brand, the beer, everything, and trying to form a thousand true fans and getting people walking into the stores. And that was like a boulder starting to roll. But like the word of mouth was so fast around Connecticut, where we launched, then Massachusetts and Maine was next, New Hampshire, and right up the coast.
And then we kind of loop back around with Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. And all the forecasts were very low. So we had thought we'd built an enormous brewery. Like when did I know we were really onto something? Like we had thought this 10,000-foot, 5,000-barrel brewery we thought was enormous. And everyone told us we were dumb for building something that big.
And all our distributors that we had opened up and all our retailers were giving us these forecasts that were very manageable to make. And expectations for the category were very low. But going into our first full summer on the market, we were just blowing through beer and absolutely out of stock. So painfully to the point where it sounds silly, but like people were literally meeting our distributors trucks in the parking lot at Whole Foods and Wegmans and stuff.
and getting the beer from the delivery person walking to the cash register. And it wasn't even like touching the warehouse, which it sounds like a great demand problem to have, except the retailer shelf was empty seven days a week. so we were very painfully out of stock. so we'd gone from very ironically, a point where like, we literally could not talk to someone about non-alcoholic beer to 10 months later, like everyone's yelling at us for not making enough non-alcoholic beer.
And like, there's this big outcry and, so that was a really painful growing pain, but I think that's when we knew we were really onto something and somewhat in big trouble too. Like we're not financed to build a brewery that was 10 times as big as that.
Tim (28:30.062)
So you launched in May, 2018 and you clearly had that boots on the ground mentality, trying to find a thousand true fans and something else that you mentioned earlier is that when you launched, weren't a lot of strong D to C presences in the beverage space, but that's something that you also launched as well. And that clearly has an impact on the sales side of the business. But how big of an effect do you think that also had?
from a brand building standpoint and continuing to build that relationship between athletic and your consumers.
Bill @ Athletic (29:07.043)
Yeah. So I, I definitely, even though I come from like a very strong financial background, it was great with, you know, general financial statements and company analysis, like income statements and balance sheets, the granular operating model nature of it. I think I'd misfired a lot on the unit economics of DTC beer. you know, we were making very extremely expensive, limited varieties.
not our more affordable flagship beers, and then mailing them all over the country, which is extremely heavy and expensive. And so we were running this like pretty economical, uneconomical DTC business that, you know, everyone was like, this is a waste of time. No one's ever going to order beer on the internet. Well, it actually turns out that non-alcoholic beer up to that point had been just basic lagers. It was a shelf of like five lagers.
with no marketing support and athletic brewing came into the category and for the first time offered IPAs, cold and ales, stouts. And then, know, John Walker, our co-founder and COO. but at that time it was like me, him and two other people when I, we've launched e-commerce and we would just be sitting in the office and be like, do we think we can make a sour beer or a Radler? Like, we were like, this summer, like we should do like a
a fruit stand series and like we got a bunch of fruit from the farmers market and made these like amazing sour beers. And so we, that, in probably the first 12 months on the market, we probably launched 20 to 25 exciting new non-alcoholic beer flavors into a category that had never had any variety. And so we're going live every Monday at 5pm with these offerings and they started selling out so fast and like
At first it was like things would sit up there a couple days, then it was a couple hours, and then things were selling out within 30 seconds of launch, like within a couple months. And so it was pretty funny to see how fast the D2C grew by word of mouth and just really basic social media. Like we were not really spending any money at all. was like some posts, if I thought they were good, I would like put a little boost behind on Instagram, but it was not sophisticated whatsoever.
Bill @ Athletic (31:32.847)
And I think it was just like true resonance and word of mouth in the community that it was growing so fast. But yeah, I was just packing the boxes myself and shipping them. originally it was, we had one teammate in e-commerce, Derek, who is still with us, incredible teammate who's grown with us the whole way and Duntrell. like we went from like, I'd pack like three packages a day, then it would be five packages a day, 10 packages a day.
All of a sudden I was coming in on Monday mornings and it was like 50 packages. And then all of a sudden it was like hundreds of packages a day. And now we're in the thousands of packages every day. But that e-commerce experience was really formative where most beer launches are just where you locally have a distributor. so like most New England craft brewers when they launched would...
launch in their surrounding area and be sold to people who could come and wait in line at the brewery and a very small radius of stores around it. Athletic brewing was just posting to the whole country. And over time, our business has evolved to most of our beer being sold in stores. We still have a great e-commerce platform that supports the overall business, but it was very funny to be nationally available right from the jump.
Also really that data was super interesting. We'd see that, wow, there's all these pockets in the country that were really resonating. And like we should be investing more in those areas. And for that reason, when we outgrew the brewery, we built our second brewery in San Diego, California, 3000 miles away.
Tim (33:12.15)
Athletic has obviously grown massively, but what I find so interesting and so cool is how you can build this massive brand, but the roots of it are kind of just this one person who had this own personal experience and problem. How has using yourself been, an opportunity or a strength for building the brands?
customer base and sort of using yourself as the persona for, you know, as the guiding force for building the brand.
Bill @ Athletic (33:48.205)
Well, I surely don't want to take credit for everything. think, you know, lot of the original brand values and themes and concepts were like definitely extremely true to my life. like, we, we take a lot of care to remain an authentic brand. And, like a lot of our great teammates contribute to like what our brand is and how we interact with the community these days.
I'm very often reflecting with our co-founder, just like how incredible it is who has walked in our door on this journey. Like the, people who've helped us build athletic are so special and so talented. And I absolutely love working with and both like working really hard with collaborating and challenging them, but also like laughing a lot, having a lot of fun, traveling together, sampling a lot of beers, doing silly things, having great team events. so,
We have been really intentional about that team culture and community, both inside and outside our walls. and something John and I've always said is like from day one, we want to make sure that like, what we say inside our walls is exactly what we say outside our walls. So we're never in a position as a company where we're like trying to get our story straight. And that makes living life really easy and easy to sleep at night when like the brand values are just like.
true and true. I also was really intentional. so like, this brand is my life in many ways, it's like such a big part of it. And we not only wanted like elements of our personality to come through in the brand. like, like healthy outdoors elements like that charitable elements.
But we wanted people as they experience athletic to like fall in love with athletic over and over again, find out things in the brand life. we think about like peeling back the onion. And I wanted it to be like people who like are experienced athletic for two, three, four years are finding out things that they love about the company way down their brand journey with us. So, yeah, I've always kind of thought about that way too.
Tim (36:00.674)
deeper into the brand positioning and also from the communications aspect of thing. You've talked about how you don't see athletic as being competition, but more so a compliment to the alcoholic category and to take things a step further. And you've talked about this earlier with your own experience with alcohol, where you were solely just focused on your own personal relationship with alcohol. You know, you're not demon, you're not demonizing alcohol, alcohol.
And I see it for my own life and own experiences that it's not alcohol that is the focus. It's my relationship with it. And that's how it evolves. So taking things as a step forward, how important for the development of athletic brewing has it been? Not necessarily being pro alcohol, but you're definitely not also anti alcohol.
Bill @ Athletic (36:57.563)
Yeah, I think it's a
so I, I did look at like, as I thought about the position of the company, you know, the previous position on like, does knit driving and like corporate social responsibility. And like, I really wanted to empower people to be able to make this choice and not be boxed into one of those situations. And so I've always thought about like aspirational lifestyle.
And I wanted it to be something that people would hold with the label out and be so excited and so proud to talk about. rather than like pouring it in a cup and hope no one saw, I wanted people to stand there with the label out and like, hope someone asked about it and be like, I discovered this. And like, this is why I drink it. And I love this about them. And like, did you know like they do this? Like they donate $2 million a year to trails and parks, like, and all these things. And so.
That was definitely really intentional. I definitely want to give credit to our creative and branding agency, Fairfolk, who I started working with in the month after I quit my job. So a friend I'd known from prior life reached out to me and was like, I know you're very financial and operations oriented, but like, if you need any help, like making athletic come to life in the real world, like let me know. And we had some conversations and
They they've been our partners for seven plus years now and have like really helped with a lot of our brand identity stuff. it's more importantly, like they worked just so closely with me getting to know like my vision for the brand reading everything I ever put on paper about it, what values I wanted, where I thought we'd be going in 10 years. And then they helped me like, pull that out of me and get it onto the cans and like, so and
Bill @ Athletic (38:53.62)
me and them have had so much fun over the years, like making that happen. and then, a lot of our credible, like, and so in athletic, like, I'm not an expert in everything we do and I'm very far from it. try to stand top of everything we're doing, but the experts around our company too, are so talented in all their realms. And so, I just feel very fortunate to be working with our team.
Tim (39:22.968)
Drinking is obviously a very ritualistic experience like we've spoken about. I'm curious to know, have you done any studies or have you seen any research on how drinking either athletics specifically or NA beers replicates the alcoholic experience from a psychological or emotional component?
Bill @ Athletic (39:47.743)
So one thing we do here over and over again is like the placebo effect. And I think that has to do with people drinking alcohol or drinking beer for 5,000 years. And, and like, when people smell, I think it has to do with like other senses, like smelling the malt, selling the hops, smelling the hops, tasting the beer.
relaxing and holding in your hand, being with friends and family. I think all those things signify like I'm relaxing and I'm socializing. And so there is a natural tendency that I think there's something way deeper in our senses that I do really relax when I have one of our beers. And then like, so we haven't, we've done a number of like, very scientific studies on like food safety and quality in our company, but like, not necessarily on
like the effects of drinking our beer and things. But I can say we probably receive over a million customer emails a year. It's got to be. in that we have a preponderance of evidence and testimonials of people sharing their experience with Athletic and the positive impact it's had on their life or the inclusion of family members who previously felt excluded from situations or
friends or family, like people who used to feel excluded now can participate socially, or all these stories about how like, when someone in their family stopped drinking, and they like lost these favorite moments and family connections they used to have, now they are able to do that again. Or it be people who are sick and can't drink alcohol. And this is like a semblance of normalcy and relaxing for them. We've heard that a lot. But also like,
just a ton of emails of people who are like, you know, I've been struggling with drinking for 30 years and I want to have the full social experience, but like never knew how to make it happen. I couldn't cross the line. And those emails are like so rewarding for us. so, yeah, it's not necessarily the most scientific, but it's like in terms of someone who has like left a career to do a career with more purpose. It is like,
Bill @ Athletic (42:08.207)
It fuels my fire like I couldn't even possibly put to words and receiving emails like that from our community makes it when, you know, very often I'm working till 11, 12 at night. And if there was a button next to my computer that I could hit to get six more hours of work, like in my old career where I would do anything to shut down work for the day, the week, whatever.
With athletic, I would bang that six more buttons, six more hours, please button all day if I could.
Tim (42:42.798)
That's awesome to hear. And yeah, it really feels like you're not just selling a drink. You're selling somebody a certain type of energy and a certain type of identity that they want to embody. And you've spoke about this earlier before how this really wasn't an innovative part of the category. I mean, as much as athletic was about taking advantage of an underserved market and untapped potential,
How much was it also about like, all right, we're going to make this thing. We're going to make it look really cool.
Bill @ Athletic (43:18.57)
Yeah, I think that was an important part of it. So.
You know, our co founder, John is we didn't know each other at all when we started, we had met once. And, you know, as he was like the only person interested in work on this, and he just turned out to be like the most amazing person. we have. Along the whole journey, we've had all these really interesting formative conversations. And I remember very early us talking about like, what's important in like building the longterm brand and from a
production standpoint, John was always like, quality is like, if we build a great quality product, it'll, that's all we need to do. And I was like, I hate to sound simple or superficial, but I think the marketing is equally as important as great product. And we have to have both. if, if, if either aren't totally there, it's not going to be what we want it to be. And, I do truly think that, marketing has been.
really important. We've been extremely fortunate to have people like JJ Watt and David Chang and Carly Klaus and Lance Armstrong. And I remember talking to JJ Watt early in the brand life, and he is someone who like really understood the brand proposition. And I was super fortunate to meet and he's the nicest guy in the world. And he was like, Bill, I don't know if I'm like ready to be like the face of non-alcoholic beer. I mean, it like ruthlessly made fun of by like
college bros all across the country. And he's like, but I really get this. want to be supportive. And all of a sudden, like, he just started leaning into it and like posting on Instagram during college football Saturdays. And like, it gets that much harder to make fun of non-alcoholic beer when you have one of the most elite athletes in the country talking about it in a positive way. And like, we've had all these moments that have kind of just snowballed, but I do think the marketing and the positioning ends up being
Bill @ Athletic (45:20.737)
just as important as the product quality, but you really don't have much if you don't have both, I don't think.
Tim (45:29.496)
getting deeper into your own personal wellness routine now and specifically talking about meditation. So you have a morning and an evening meditation routine and in the morning your meditation is more geared towards your goals and you repeat your long-term goals 15 times and then at night your meditation is geared more towards gratitude and you've said that the word dent
is part of this meditation practice at night where you're trying to put a positive dent in the world. And I'm a big proponent of visualizing what you want to happen in the future. The stronger vision that you have, the more I think you're able to create that reality. But for you, how has verbalizing what you want played a role in your life?
Bill @ Athletic (46:21.7)
Yeah, that's exactly it. I've cobbled together my meditation routines from a number of people I've heard describe their meditation routines. There's some things I've kept, there's some things I've passed off.
You know, I generally try to, I forget exactly where I picked this up, but like, try to think of it as like windshield wipers. Like if thoughts come into my head, I try to like wash them out while I'm meditating and stay focused. And exactly as you said, I do really try to visualize like my goals, my family, my impact on the world, especially in the morning. But I do do that in both. And then I do think in this day and age, it's so easy to like,
Yeah, the reason I do gratitude at night is because so many things happen in the day. And I want to be thankful for the good things that are happening because so often I can be just locked in on what I need to improve on and what's next. And it's not only about the finish lines. It's about enjoying the whole journey along the way. so, like being sure I recognize three great things that happened in that day has been really important. And I taking that out of my meditation practice to the real world too.
Me and John are trying to like be really intentional as entrepreneurs. Like me and him connect a lot either for in the same building in person, if we're, we lived on opposite coasts for almost three years of this journey. So like we're a regular on the phone and like just trying to call him up like late in the day. Cause I know every day is stressful and be like, Hey, do you remember this, this morning? That was like pretty darn cool. Or like, that was a huge milestone. And we'd make sure to like sit down and have a beer and just like celebrate a milestone.
And we do a monthly team update call where we celebrate wins as a team too, in front of the whole company. And so I think that gratitude and like celebrating wins along the journey is important because like, if you're just putting everything into like the bag you get at the finish line, like, you know, I've heard people describe it as like climbing the ladder and looking in the bag to see what's there. Like, like what if there's nothing there? Like I want, it's about the journey, not.
Bill @ Athletic (48:37.773)
whatever's in that bag. so, yeah, I think that I also, one thing about meditation, I heard Jerry Seinfeld say really recently was like, meditation is a trick where he's like, I don't know what it is. I don't know how it works, but he's like, it just fills up your mental tank and you realize that at like 1pm, your mind is just going at a different level and it's smoother than it otherwise would have been. And that really resonated with me. I
I think meditating and trying to be more big pictures helped me like smooth out the peaks and valleys of this entrepreneurial journey.
Tim (49:13.612)
You clearly have a deep energy and passion behind your work. And something interesting that I heard you say previously is that in your old career, you know, you would have been a loving father, but you don't think you would have been a purpose driven or energized father. And I think that's an interesting concept because the relationship between a parent and their child that's, you know,
the main focal point is obviously going to be love. But when it comes to energy and passion, I think that's a little bit of a different ball game because those are things that you have to embody yourself. And then that gets passed on to other people. And that had me thinking about, you know, the relationship with my dad where, you know, I think my dad is very passionate person where he has
you know, his own work and his own projects where I can just view him sort of within his own environment and like through osmosis, then that energy gets passed on to me. And I know a quote that you like is also the world belongs the to the energetic Ralph Waldo Emerson. How do you think the energy behind your work has made you a better father?
Bill @ Athletic (50:32.56)
Yeah, I think ultimately at the end of the day, words are words and like children will emulate what they see done in the world. And so I'm really just trying to lead by example and be present as much as I can and being really cognizant that, you know, in 20 years when my son has grown up and out of the house,
that like, these are the moments I'll do anything to get back and be present in. So like, I'm trying to really be present in the moments now and really get the most out of them and, and enjoy them as much as I can and be as impactful as I can on his life, because I know those moments are fleeting where, you know, I can only be that positive example for like him for the rest of his life. So many times, my access to him is going to go down 90 % in
just a matter of like 15 years probably, so.
Tim (51:29.87)
You know you think The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is the best book and I think the best line is when you want something all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. How do you think the universe has conspired in your favor?
Bill @ Athletic (51:45.885)
And basically every way. I think I'm actively out there. Like, you know, I'm not sitting on the couch hoping.
opportunities walk in the door and knock on my door and like say, Hey, opportunities here, take advantage of it. Like I'm definitely out there working extremely hard, bringing that energy. But at the same time, it, feels like just as equally people are legitimately just knocking on our door. can't tell you how many amazing teammates or contacts at a flood athletic brewing have literally just knocked on the door and
I reflect on those moments and try to be sure to tell the teammates that, like, I'm not sure where you came from, why you decided to knock on the door, but I'm like so glad you did. and so I feel very fortunate to like have found this purpose and this journey and having a ton of fun doing it and loving the people I'm doing it with.
Bill @ Athletic (52:54.518)
I think my internet might have skipped there, but I'm sure that'll all upload.
Tim (52:58.424)
Seattle upload.
My last question for you, what does the future look like for athletic in 2025 and beyond? are the main priorities?
Bill @ Athletic (53:11.48)
Yeah. mean, the great thing is, like me and John have always had really boring answers to that question. It's like, we have a simple and very long-term focus. It's, you know, giving people great options and we think non-alcoholic beer is going to grow and grow as a percentage of beer over the future. And basically just want to make our products. we'll, we want our beers to be like the most delightful.
and like rewarding part of people's days. And so that is so important. And then just have like a huge positive impact on the world by being available. And so from there, I think all of our goals and programs are scalable and we're just be doing a lot more of what we've been doing.
Tim (53:55.118)
It's not broke, don't fix it.
Bill @ Athletic (53:57.217)
Yep. Yeah. And we're having a lot of fun doing it. So I'm just going to keep doing mostly the same stuff, but I will say we've got like a thousand random great ideas from the team and ourselves every day. So there'll always be a lot of fun there, but like the big things will always be consistent.
Tim (54:14.698)
Awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing the future growth and success of athletic and appreciate you for coming on the show, Bill.
Bill @ Athletic (54:22.509)
Awesome. Thanks so much, Tim. Really appreciate having me. It was a lot of fun.
