Latest / Craft Brewery Financial Training Podcast / How Lawson’s Finest Liquids Scaled With Plans, Numbers, And Purpose

Transcript

How Lawson’s Finest Liquids Scaled With Plans, Numbers, And Purpose · Craft Brewery Financial Training Podcast

• 0:00
  Kary Shumway: Today on the podcast, we hear from Sean Lawson, the founder of Lawson's Finest Liquids.
• 0:04
  Kary Shumway: He shares his journey from a one-barrel homebrew operation to a successful Vermont-based brewery that produces sip of sunshine and other craft beers.
• 0:13
  Kary Shumway: Sean talks about how careful planning, regular business reviews, and an advisory board have been crucial to his company's growth.
• 0:21
  Kary Shumway: He emphasized the importance of setting goals, tracking financial metrics like cash flow and gross margins, and making data-driven decisions.
• 0:30
  Kary Shumway: He also highlights the challenges of managing people and the need for transparency during difficult times.
• 0:37
  Kary Shumway: Our conversation covers how Sean's company navigated the pandemic, made strategic decisions about distribution and production, and maintained strong brand loyalty through a purpose-driven business.
• 0:49
  Kary Shumway: So for now, please enjoy this conversation with Sean Lawson, founder of Lawson's Finest Liquids.
• 0:56
  Kary Shumway: Welcome to the Craft Brewery Financial Training Podcast, where we combine beer and numbers to provide you with tips, tactics, and strategies so that you can improve financial results in your brewery.
• 1:06
  Kary Shumway: I'm your host, Carrie Shemoy, a CPA, CFO for a brewery, and a former CFO for a beer distributor.
• 1:13
  Kary Shumway: I've spent the last 20 years using finance to improve financial results in our beer business.
• 1:18
  Kary Shumway: Now I'm helping other craft breweries to do the same.
• 1:22
  Kary Shumway: Are you ready to take your brewery financial results to the next level?
• 1:25
  Kary Shumway: Okay, let's get started.
• 1:30
  Kary Shumway: Just a quick note and we'll be right back to the podcast.
• 1:33
  Kary Shumway: If your brewery has been feeling financial pressure, you're not alone.
• 1:36
  Kary Shumway: Margins are tighter, cash flow feels unpredictable, and too many decisions are being made without clear numbers.
• 1:42
  Kary Shumway: So I've built something different for you.
• 1:45
  Kary Shumway: This is the 90-day brewery financial reboot.
• 1:48
  Kary Shumway: It's a guided financial operating system that gets your brewery back in control fast.
• 1:53
  Kary Shumway: Over the next 90 days, you'll install a simple scoreboard, identify hidden cash leaks, set clear profit targets, and build a 12-month financial roadmap so you always know what to fix next and what to focus on in the long term.
• 2:08
  Kary Shumway: It's not a course, it's a system that replaces guessing with confident, profitable decisions.
• 2:14
  Kary Shumway: So if you'd like to learn more about the 90-day brewery financial reboot, you can simply click the link here in the podcast notes or email me Carrie at bearbusinessfinance.com, K-A-R-Y at BeerBusinessfinance.com.
• 2:28
  Kary Shumway: Hey Sean, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Carrie, thanks so much for having me on today.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it.
• 2:34
  Kary Shumway: It is awesome to have you here.
• 2:36
  Kary Shumway: So for folks who may not be familiar with you or your business, why don't you give them some background?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you bet.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um my name's Sean Lawson.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: I founded uh Lawson's Finest Liquids here in Vermont.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're headquartered in Waitsfield.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I started up the road uh 18 years ago uh in Warren, Vermont, the next town south, when I built a small little outbuilding uh for my hobby, which was home brewing.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no formal training in brewing, but I have a science-y background with a degree in uh environmental studies and a master's in forestry, and that definitely helped me out in the brew house.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh started very small, grew incrementally in the first few years.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just distribute or I was self-distributing the beer in those early years.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then uh did a small expansion right there in Warren in the original brew house, which was only 280 square feet.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a tiny operation.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I went from a one-barrel uh when I started in 2008 to a seven barrel in 2011, and over the next couple of years, um, craft beer was really uh on a fire back then and growing at an incredible rate.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I was immediately maxed out on that system as to how much beer I could produce, and it was not even touching demand.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So after a couple of years of brewing on that seven-barrel system and people constantly kind of knocking down the door to retailers, distributors, uh, individual customers, stores, bars, and restaurants, trying to figure out what's the next step.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have access to capital.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: I already mortgaged the house a second time to buy the seven-barrel system.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we weren't ready to take on investors or give up any ownership in the company.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been reading about this place called Two Roads, and they were just opening up um with a business model to produce their own brand, but also be uh a contract brewer for today's craft brewers, meaning um they could offer a lot of flexibility in terms of uh ingredient selection and process around how I wanted to produce the beer.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I took a look at them as maybe an option to grow um and to produce more beer and to be able to start saying yes to more people because I was saying no all the time, which was really not why I got into business.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I I went down, I met with the team there, I got a water sample.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was really close to what we were working with up in Vermont and decided to give it a try.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I let them know up front, hey, if this quality of the liquids doesn't match what we um what I expect from uh the system in Warren or what I know our fans are expecting the finest liquids to taste like, we're not going forward with it.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't our reputation is the most valuable thing that we have right now.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that very first test batch uh tasted awesome.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I decided to launch that beer uh called Sip of Sunshine.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was inspired by our original home run beer, double sunshine, that people drove from all over all over the place.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say New England, but they really came from much further afield uh because I met some guys waiting in line one day down at the Warren store who had driven overnight from Chicago to come buy some 22-ounce bottles.
• 6:03
  Kary Shumway: No kidding.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so once we launched Sip of Sunshine at Two Roads in 2014, things were really off to the races.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I was able to um expand distribution here in Vermont first, um, and then Connecticut, and then uh a few years later started expanding um across the Northeast with new distribution partners.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um 2017, 18, 99 were really huge growth years for us.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: All through that period, we were, you know, rapidly expanding.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so that got us to the position just about 10 years in to uh finally build a home for Lawson's finance because he couldn't get there from here before.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was up at my house.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was in a residential area, we weren't open to the public, so there were no tours, no tastings, no retail shop.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: We just went out and did festivals and some events every year.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: So really exciting that we could plan and build um with our success with Sip of Sunshine produced down at Two Roads in Stratford, Connecticut, um, our headquarters that are now here in Waitsfield, Vermont.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: We built a um a 40 hectoliter uh GEA brewery, um, filled the building up with fermentation tanks and all the associated equipment and built a beautiful timber frame tap room next door on an existing campus that was really well suited for a brewery.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And um we opened up 16 months before we had to close down the tap room for COVID.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been quite a journey um to get to today, but we managed to navigate um the pandemic really well, and our retail sales uh were really robust because we were mostly cans already.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um about 75-80% of our beer, it's probably a little bit higher today, um, uh, is in package, and we probably do about um 15 to 20 percent in draft.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that that really that positioning, which was just a matter of of luck and the way that things developed, um, served us well during the pandemic.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we've been continuing to be able to grow the brand and our business incrementally um, you know, every year since then.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I can count my blessings and consider ourselves very fortunate in a in a challenging uh environment for craft brewers today.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um that we're that we're going strong and we have an incredible brand loyalty um from our fans.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then to to cap off the short version of the very long story of Lawson's Finest and how we got to today is um we're very much a purpose-driven brewery, and I think that's been part of our success is um staying centered on our core values, um, using business as a force for good.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're a certified B Corp now, and that's a really recognizable um feature, especially for younger consumers.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that gives us some traction and we always give back every year in a big way through our social impact program.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we donate all the tips.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, well, not tips, but we in lieu of tips, we take donations at our tap room.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um, since 2018, when we opened the tap room, our total giving programs are have totaled uh over three million dollars just in the last seven years that we've given to nonprofits focused on healthy communities um here in Vermont and beyond.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um my wife Karen and I, but Karen is an essential part of the founder story because in the early years she took care of the the kids, the household, and had the job with the benefits while I was scrapping away in the brew house.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and over time she joined the brewery part-time and then full-time.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she's a force behind um some of our early creative development um with the website and some of our branding and marketing.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then as um as our as our business grew, she really championed um our philanthropy and social impact uh programs.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then if you let me keep talking, you will, so you're just gonna have to cut me off at some point.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the but one of the most fun parts of the journey is two and a half years ago we hired a CEO.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So since then, Karen and I have been able to take a step up from operating on the day-to-day business and really focus on the strategic elements and what we really love about the business, which for me is being a brand ambassador, um, getting out in the field and meeting more people, spending more time with our sales team out in the field, um, and tinkering around with beer recipes uh here at home.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been it's been a great couple of last years.
• 10:48
  Kary Shumway: Yeah, that's awesome, Sean.
• 10:50
  Kary Shumway: Thanks so much for that background.
• 10:51
  Kary Shumway: You know, I think you know, you're obviously very well regarded in the industry, and that's why you know I really wanted to have this conversation to kind of share your story.
• 11:01
  Kary Shumway: Um, because I think a lot of folks out there aspire to do what you've done.
• 11:07
  Kary Shumway: Um having said that, like when you started, you know, there the trajectory is probably not uncommon, a one barrel to a seven barrel, and then you know, kind of goes from there.
• 11:18
  Kary Shumway: But was this um how much did you have like a business strategy or a plan and kind of like this is where we want to go versus let's just kind of see what happens, let's do trial and error, let's pivot when we need to.
• 11:31
  Kary Shumway: How much was like laid out and how much just sort of was navigated along the way?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really great question, Carrie, because I think um having a plan is the most is is if if not one of the most, it's the most important element to success, is planning carefully, um, executing the plan, and then constantly, you know, periodically, whether it's you know, our cadences monthly, quarterly, annually, reviewing, you know, how did we do versus what the what are the goals that we set?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Where do we need to adjust?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in the beginning, the plan was really simple.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was, I'm gonna open a one-barrel brewery as a proof of concept and see, you know, how how it goes.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Are people actually gonna buy my beer?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um, how many hours do I have to put in to make a few bucks?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I used to joke with people, they're like, oh wow, is that a is that a full-time job?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Yep, full-time job, part-time pay.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it took until you know, the until I got the seven-barrel system in there.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was still really doing everything by myself um at that point in time where it was sort of where it was, I think a a viable business venture.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was those first couple of years where I made money, but it was it was very small and incremental amounts.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so each step of the way, I've had a business plan.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so for small brewers in particular, you know, we're gonna talk a little bit about advisory boards today.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And having advisors, you don't need to have, you don't even need to have a pay pay anyone to have good advisors.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so where I started with um was with the business organizations um here in Vermont.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: So there were a couple that were key.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one is the small business development centers, and these are SBA backed, so they're all over the country.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're a free resource, they're funded by the SBA, and the Central Vermont Small Business Development Center and the folks there really helped me develop my first business plan.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was what are you gonna do?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: What's the basic financials behind it?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: How is it gonna work?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: How much are you gonna sell?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the end of the year, how much money are you gonna have left, if any, in the bank?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so those are those are kind of the fundamentals of of a business plan.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then at least having some basic information about your market.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like what's it like where are you trying to distribute or are you trying to open a brew pub?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, knowing sort of the market that you're in, what what's it like around there, what's what do restaurants do on average if you're looking to do a brew pub or for a for a brewery that does a thousand, ten thousand, whatever your initial um uh sort of projection of barrelage, how how much uh what how is the craft beer industry doing?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So today it's a lot harder to make a case to borrow money from a from a bank unless you've got really good financials.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then another one um that was really helpful to me in the beginning as a financial or business advisor that didn't cost anything was the um Central Vermont Um Economic Development Corporation.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's funded by uh a whole bunch of businesses that um are like-minded.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: They want to generate, they want to basically just generate and support um business across a whole range of different business types, whether it's you know, service industry, um, insurance, manufacturing, um, you name it, restaurant.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so I got some really helpful advice and some tools from them when I did my second business plan when I was going to the bank.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's essentially the plan is your business plan.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so every year we have every year we have uh we update, we develop a new sort of uh a business plan that's based on what we did before and where we think we're going next.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so it can be depending on the scale of your business, it could be really a simple plan or it could be pretty, it could be pretty dense and and complicated plan, but it really all starts with setting goals, um how determining how are you going to measure those goals beyond just dollars and cents, and then evaluating how you're doing on achieving those goals and on an annual basis um deciding what to adjust, what's working, and where do you want to place your bets next?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: What's the what's the plan for the next year?
• 16:08
  Kary Shumway: Yeah, I love that.
• 16:09
  Kary Shumway: It's a nice framework, you know, and it sounds um so straightforward and in many respects it is, but it still takes the discipline, right, to do it and stick with it and set the right goals and all that stuff.
• 16:22
  Kary Shumway: Because some of that does take time.
• 16:24
  Kary Shumway: And you know, I I think some folks get a little frustrated, like maybe they'll set goals and you're like, I'm not hitting them.
• 16:29
  Kary Shumway: So what's the point of this?
• 16:30
  Kary Shumway: I just I'll just work harder, right?
• 16:32
  Kary Shumway: I'll just put my head down and work harder.
• 16:34
  Kary Shumway: And but taking your eyes off the goals can be can be problematic.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not hitting your goals, you know, you do your best to figure out well, why?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why aren't we hitting our goals?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And did we simply set unrealistic goals?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because we've we've done that plenty of times.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: We thought we could achieve a certain growth rate, and the market told us differently.
• 16:58
  Kary Shumway: Yeah, reality can be tough like that.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Forecasting is probably one of the most challenging aspects of business.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like nobody's got a crystal ball.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: You take all of the information that's available to you and you try to make informed decisions, but uh ultimately the future has a lot of uncertainty to it.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you can never remove all the uncertainty.
• 17:21
  Kary Shumway: Unfortunately, we can't.
• 17:22
  Kary Shumway: So I learned I had this this nice quote that was like learn to learn to love the questions, right?
• 17:26
  Kary Shumway: Learn to love uncertainty.
• 17:28
  Kary Shumway: And that's hard to do because you know we want certainty, but if we reframe it, sometimes it can be a nice challenge.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:35
  Kary Shumway: Well, cool.
• 17:35
  Kary Shumway: So you and I met uh fairly recently, maybe just a couple three months ago at uh the Vermont uh Brewers Conference, and we were on a panel that was talking about advisory boards for breweries, and I just loved the concept and it it sort of crystallized for me because I've I've been always thinking about how small breweries really need a team of advisors to help in areas that they're not, you know, expert.
• 18:00
  Kary Shumway: So let's talk a little bit about that.
• 18:02
  Kary Shumway: Um for you, for your brewery, you know what led to the decision for you guys to create an advisory board and how far into your business journey did you implement that?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um great great questions and um good advice.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: So thankfully we've gotten a lot of good advice along the way.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I try to so when I answer your questions, I'm trying to think across the scale of different businesses from real small, you know, to to to mid-size or regional breweries.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so for real small breweries, again, looking at so what are the resources that are available um in your particular geographic area?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um in it so you've got your chamber of commerce is a great place to start in terms of asking, you know, I'm you know, I'm trying to get some help, some good advice for my business.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do you who could I connect with that would be a good resource?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then those other organizations I mentioned, and we connected with another organization called the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um when it was just myself, um my wife Karen and our first employee.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: So this is going back about eight years now.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so we had one employee at the time, but our business was growing pretty rapidly because we were producing um beer down at two roads.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so that outsourced production was really helping us to grow our business.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so they had a um a consulting program that was low cost, so it really worked for a small business owner.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And um that's where the that's where some of the good advice started.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: I got great advice along the way from those other sources that I mentioned as well.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we did a one year um consulting.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Consulting program where they paired us with a business advisor that had experience in different types of businesses and also in running organizations.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so they helped us crystallize the idea of starting an advisory board as the business really evolved and grew.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because during that one year, we were planning out our expansion and our build-out of the brewery here in Waitsfield.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And when that happened in 2018, we went from three employees to 50 employees.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: So running those two organizations looks radically different.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was as we were wrapping up the end of that one year consultancy with Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, the advice we got is I would really recommend that you guys form an advisory board.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a huge cost.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't encumber your business.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're there to give you advice, not to tell you what to do.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not a traditional board of directors that has governance and fiduciary responsibilities.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in other words, responsible for looking after the business or making important decisions, but to look from outside the fishbowl, inside the fishbowl where you're swimming around and uh or paddling furiously uh all the time or trying to figure out where which way is up.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they give you they give you advice.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so that advice to form an advisory board um was on the cusp of expanding our organization.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's been super helpful for us to have um an advisory board.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's made up of folks um who uh, like a lot of boards, have gone through like have done a lot of their career already, and they're moving into the latter stages where they have more time available and where consulting is now maybe one of their jobs or something they do on the side because they really enjoy it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we try to cover different functional areas like somebody that's got expertise in um leadership and or in organizational management, um, a finance person, and then sales and marketing are sort of the four the four key functional areas that we look for, um, a well-rounded board.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so thankfully we were able to recruit those uh board members and put together.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: We started with five.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um we had a couple of transitions after about uh the fifth year, um, and we replaced one of the board members that transitioned out um and but and we didn't replace the other yet.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we currently have four advisory board members.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um what part of your question didn't I answer?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, that's that's perfect.
• 23:24
  Kary Shumway: Uh but I did want to ask, like, maybe people are interested.
• 23:27
  Kary Shumway: I'm certainly interested in sort of the particulars, the logistics.
• 23:31
  Kary Shumway: So maybe take us to like uh how often do you meet?
• 23:35
  Kary Shumway: Uh who from your company is there in addition to these advisory folks?
• 23:39
  Kary Shumway: Yeah.
• 23:39
  Kary Shumway: What do what does the agenda look like?
• 23:41
  Kary Shumway: I mean, when you're is it the same or is it sort of project driven?
• 23:45
  Kary Shumway: Or maybe take us through kind of an example of that?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's it's both.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the advisory board meets quarterly.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have a half-day meeting each quarter.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: We plan the meetings after the end of the financial quarter.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we work on a calendar year basis for for our finances.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, at the first quarter closes the end of March.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so we'll meet, we give ourselves plenty of extra time to plan.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we'll meet basically a month later.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: We meet the first week of the month following, the month following the end of the close.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: So for first quarter, we meet in in the beginning of May, second quarter, we meet in the beginning of um August, uh, so on and so forth.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the year, we do a full-day retreat with the advisory board so we can dig into some media issues.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the agenda that's the same every time is we prepare um a board packet.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's in there is um the high-level financials.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll um so we'll include the um profit and loss statement or the income statement and a few different versions.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we we'll do the quarter, we'll do uh and we'll do year to date, and then we'll also have the the balance sheet in there.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we'll have uh an executive report, which I used to do, and now our CEO uh prepares that executive report, which is basically a high-level look at how's the business doing, what happened in the last quarter, how are we doing this year, and what are the key risks and opportunities in front of us?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like what are the key challenges?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then we get a report, a real, you know, a real uh concise report um from our, you know, whoever your financial head is.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, we have a chief financial officer.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the CFO prepare prepares like it's basically like a one-page memo, which is um it's a management discussion.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: It says, here are the pertinent metrics and the finances.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is what it's telling us, this is how we're doing, um, this is where we're going.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and here's some few key things to want to point out um or some flags that we need to watch out for in the future.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have um we have a series of uh dashboards.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a company-wide dashboard on um how we're doing um relative to our stated business plan.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like our big picture goals would be like your your income.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing on your income and your target for the year?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how are we doing with our core brands and our number of cases sold?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: What's the velocity of our brands?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then how's our team doing?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: What how are we doing on retention?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we we have a uh KPI for that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um how are we doing on training?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um how are we doing on our costs, so our cogs and supply chain optimization?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: We have a real short set of metrics that we um that we have there, and then we have um, and then of course at the end of the dashboard is the all-important um profitability number.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: So how is it how are we tracking on net profit or EBITDA or whatever net operating income, whichever one is the most important to your company and the size of of your company, and then we have some dashboards related to each of the departments.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we've got some sales dashboards with the KPIs that we're looking for in sales, um, in marketing, um, in tap room, and then um we have some some sub uh company-wide um PL sheets also.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like so we look at the tap room as a business unit.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we could we run a whole PL um just for the tap room with all of the costs and expenses and then um all of your income categories.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um and we've got uh we've got four, we look at our business with four business units the tap room, um uh beer distribution, so beer distribution out in the market.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe I overstated that.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's not four.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the two, those are the two key ones.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course there's the overall, the combined.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then because we've grown over the years, we also have a couple of um uh subcompanies that that we operate.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: So because we got to a certain scale, we decided when we built out this facility to form a separate LLC to own the real estate and the buildings to separate out some liability from the operations to the landowner and the and the building owner.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it get the more comp the more you grow, the more complicated it gets.
• 28:43
  Kary Shumway: So that's unfortunately that is the way it works.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:47
  Kary Shumway: What sort of um that's a great recap.
• 28:49
  Kary Shumway: I appreciate that.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: What sort of um oh I forgot I uh I got another key part of the answer to your question is so that's what that's the same that we do every every quarter.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then what's different is we bring typically we end up with enough time for two big rocks or challenges or key decisions we want to make.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, we want to go into a new market.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Here's we're gonna present to the advisory board.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the case that we've built for going into this new market.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Here's why we think we can be successful, here's the data of this market, like demographics.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how's craft beer doing there?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: How are crap how's craft beer in the package formats that we sell in doing in that beer?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: How are IPAs doing in that market?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we'll present that as a case and and then have the advisory board ask questions, provide feedback, um, and give us their opinion on it.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: So every that's what's different every quarter is we bring different issues to discuss whether it's a it's a big challenge that's in front of us that we're trying to solve that we're not sure what the right answer is, or we're trying to make a key, key decision.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like the probably the biggest decision that we made this year, as an example, was we decided to um exit the self-distribution business here in Vermont.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we had built that business up over 17 years.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And in the last few years, we took on a few more products beyond beer to help start building out the portfolio because we were just distributing our own beer.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then this year the marketplace really changed and um it was became suddenly very clear that we might want to, it might be time to make an exit because we were we were using another distributor here in Vermont.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we split the state between self-distribution and another small wholesaler, and they decided that they were exiting.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so we decided, well, maybe now's the time to hand off the entire state to a much bigger and more capable um wholesaler here in Vermont.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: So like that decision was a big workshop that we did with the advisory board to look through all the all the potential um advantages, but also all the potential pitfalls and risks to making that move and making that decision.
• 31:06
  Kary Shumway: So how do you select the folks?
• 31:08
  Kary Shumway: So I think you had said uh leadership, management, finance, um, I'm missing oh, sales.
• 31:14
  Kary Shumway: How do you kind of select or curate that group of people?
• 31:18
  Kary Shumway: Are these folks that maybe you've met over the years, or do they come to you, or who's who's kind of in charge of kind of curating the board?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's um it's a it's it's a combination of networking, um, so reaching out to people to see if they might have any interest, but but more so someone who you know and work with knows someone that might be a good candidate, and then we reach out to them.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that that was how we curated or or found our first advisory board.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um and the folks that we worked with at Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund in that initial year where we just had one advisor, they were super helpful in connecting us with other folks because they have a whole network of folks that serve as co like business coaches where you could you could just bring them on on a paid hourly basis to work on either a project or an ongoing, like, hey, I need help figuring out my business as a whole.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Can you help me out?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so that network was where we found our first uh set, like connecting through that network and getting referrals to other folks is how we found them.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then also just maybe looking at it's like who do you know, or who do you or who do you work with, who do they know?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And do you know anybody often the key candidate is like somebody that's been in business that retired or sold their business.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Usually those are the folks that have a lot of experience and have seen um like all of the typical business successes and failures um that a business goes through on a cycle.
• 33:01
  Kary Shumway: Yep.
• 33:02
  Kary Shumway: Experience is the greatest teacher, right?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sure is.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: It sure is.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: I love this cartoon that was on um the back of a of like one of these um you know workshops that I went to that was for businesses, and it was it was a little kid sitting on the floor, and he said, and it was um what I there was a couple of books around him, and it said what what I learned from reading books, and then there was another much bigger stack of books around him that said in the second panel, what I learned from doing things, and then he was totally almost buried in the books that said, What I learned from failure.
• 33:45
  Kary Shumway: It's painful, but it's true, isn't it?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:48
  Kary Shumway: How um maybe how has uh oh, I know what I wanted to ask you was so you you you have your agendas, you have your meetings, you're presenting information, you're getting presumably feedback and advice.
• 34:01
  Kary Shumway: How does the decision making work?
• 34:02
  Kary Shumway: So or or is that sort of an independent um process?
• 34:06
  Kary Shumway: Like is this now okay, we're gonna we're gonna present it, we're gonna talk about it, we're gonna get our uh you know people's input and whatnot, and then then we're gonna go off and make the decision as a as a ownership exactly.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: So um the other key aspects of the meeting will be um the leadership.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: So before we had a hired CEO, it was myself as the CEO, and we bring in the leadership team um for the advisory board meeting um and they participate.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a little bit less so now that we have a hired CEO.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's primarily the CEO and maybe the CFO, um, and we work together.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: But if there's a specific project or topic or challenge we're working on, um that, you know, the leader of that functional area, whether it's sales or marketing or brewery operations, will be there to be a part of that.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we've been over time incorporating more of the entire leadership team at the beginning of the meeting, um, which is what we open up with a with a QA.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so after, so we get all the advice, we have all the discussions, and then we take that back as a team, we digest it, and then the CEO works with the leadership team to make a final decision.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's sort of the typical um sort of mechanics of how decision making works with an advisory board that's not a they're not a decision-making board.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: So they're there to give you advice, and then we follow up and let them know what we decided.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um the other uh the other uh key component to the advisory board cadence um that I didn't mention was executive session.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um in the past, when we had the whole leadership team there for the whole meeting, at the you know, at the end, we take a chunk of time for executive session, which is just the owners of the company and the advisory board to talk about either the the thorniest issues or just to get sensitive advice about you know financials or family or personal matter.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, where where you're going and what you're doing with the business.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that has been really super helpful for us.
• 36:23
  Kary Shumway: That that is so cool.
• 36:24
  Kary Shumway: How how would you um maybe a lessons learned moment?
• 36:28
  Kary Shumway: Like so it's obviously evolved over the years.
• 36:31
  Kary Shumway: Like if you had to do it again, maybe this could be a combination of you know, you said the failure thing.
• 36:37
  Kary Shumway: Like what maybe were there any fail famous failures from trying to get this thing going or any mistakes?
• 36:42
  Kary Shumway: Don't do this, trying to try to avoid that.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um Well, I you know, you you asked a great question um earlier before we got on the call ahead of the podcast about, you know, what were the you know, what were the the the biggest um the lessons learned the hard way.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah um and so I think the the biggest ones um for us when it comes to operate operationally, those were the ones that have really had the biggest financial impact.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the the biggest make mistakes we made as a as a brewery business um was overcommitting.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so we got really overcommitted on hops um and on cans, um, which shouldn't be surprising with the pandemic, but that's that all the two the two biggest financial mistakes happened in the last five years where we've found ourselves just overcommitted.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think again, it comes back to that central premise of planning carefully.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we overcommitted on a where we pre-printing cans because there was a lot of concern about you know supply chain and availability of cans in the early days.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we ended up discontinuing um a beer brand because it was kind of to we didn't know it was gonna tank, but it had been doing well for a few years, and then suddenly, for whatever reasons, the market was the market was shifting, and that type of beer was really not selling well for us anymore.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we decided rather than trying to um you know keep potentially damage our reputation by keep pushing a beer into the market that's not selling well and it going out of code because we were seeing a lot of out of code, um, we decided to pull the plug on the brand.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we had, you know, we had we had a lot of cans.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was a big financial hit to destroy all those cans.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: We actually ended up um relabeling all the cans, but it that was just as expensive as ordering new cans.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: But at least we saved the aluminum for for for first use and then recycling.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then the hops, same kind of situation where we just we were over optimistic.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um thankfully building relationships is so important in business, any type of business.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, thankfully, you know, we took one hit on um the hops, which was also a pretty significant financial one where we were just we were way overcommitted and we needed to we needed to scale back our contract, and the supplier we worked with wasn't willing to give us any leeway on it.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we ended up having to pay a pretty substantial penalty not to purchase the hops from them.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then another hop supplier um that's really the best in the business, Yakima Chief.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they worked with us to work through and reduce our overcommitment and um shave down our future contracting um or to shift some things around and get creative so that it didn't it wasn't painful for either one of us.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I really love working with the folks at Yakima Chief.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're great.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that that one was a was a big hit that was avoided um through a strong relationship and by working with them and we actually we got to help each other out.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: So by paying in advance for some of the hops that we didn't need yet, um, we were we were able to get a discount.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so sometimes creative solutions come out of big problems that you need to solve.
• 40:21
  Kary Shumway: That's right.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's excellent.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then in peep you know on the people side, the people side is the other is really the hard like managing people is one of the hardest parts of business.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there are endless lessons, hard lessons to learn about managing people.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the most important one is to just, you know, to the greatest extent possible, be transparent with your team to the to the level that it makes sense for the size of your business and the way that you operate.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: And even when you don't know what the answer is or what's going on, just let people know, like, hey, we don't know, like the pandemic was a great example of we really for a while we sent out an email every day to just say, here's the latest that we have of what we know is going on, and here's what we're planning to do, you know, right now.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then eventually it dropped to um you know weekly and then monthly, and that that kind of went away.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: But we have a weekly newsletter that we put out to our employees now and try to keep everybody well informed.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then just um, you know, the hardest, the the age-old ad what's the right word?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the adage.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: The adage, that's the word I was looking for, is like so many companies are um quick to quick to hire, slow to fire.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you gotta, it's painful, but you need to recognize when someone on your team is really not working, where they're they're not the right fit for your company or they're they're in the wrong seat, or their performance is is just really not at all meeting expectations.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Just have an honest conversation with them, see what you can do to improve that performance.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, put together a plan.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if the plan doesn't work and they still can't meet expectations, just be real about it.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't not everyone works out.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so um keeping people around that are where it's painful to make the decision to let someone go because it's even if their job performance isn't great, they're still they're kind of like part of your family.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so when they're working at your company, um, and so it's a really hard decision to make, but um, you have to let people go sometimes, and um, realizing when when it's time uh to make that decision um is one of the hardest ones to make in business.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's always painful.
• 42:45
  Kary Shumway: No doubt, no doubt.
• 42:46
  Kary Shumway: Well, let's let's pivot and talk a little bit about um the numbers side of the business.
• 42:51
  Kary Shumway: I mean, obviously that drives a lot of the decisions, and you know, certainly in your advisory board meetings, that's kind of front and center of the PL and all those things.
• 42:58
  Kary Shumway: And so if we talk about like, I think this was your word of like financial essentials.
• 43:04
  Kary Shumway: Um, when you look at like those key numbers, what do you feel like the numbers, what are the numbers that really matter?
• 43:09
  Kary Shumway: If you could kind of have to narrow it down to like three to five numbers or metrics that you watch like all the time, like what are those and and uh how did you choose them?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um cash is king.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: So check the bank account all the time.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh and so that's that's your first measure of your company's financial health.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you have plenty of money in the bank and you're not over your head in debt, um that's uh that's a good that's a good sign.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's one of the red flags to look out for is like how much debt you take on.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so like a common kind of uh you know, business uh guideline um for say manufacturing business might be like uh your debt to asset ratio being like 40% or lower is pretty healthy.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: So in other words, you you haven't taken on more, you've got 100 X in assets, don't take on more than 40x in debt.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um or it's really rough, but um you know, don't don't buy something that you're that you don't expect to generate at least an equivalent amount of new income in in a year.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: Not not net income, but at least gross income.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're gonna say make a million dollar investment in equipment, um either it's got an important um purpose, efficiency, or another goal that we're serving, or it should really produce you know, a million dollars in new in new revenue, if not in the first year, certainly per year within the first three years.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, it's probably a bad bet.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: Gotta get that return on investment.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: For any business owner, um, you know, the the the PL, your income statement, and the balance sheet are the two most important financial tools that you need to that you need to understand, no matter how small you are or how big you are.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're the fundamentals of business.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: So um if you don't know your way around those two documents, become good friends with your accountant for a little while and get really familiar with them.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know what what to look for and what to look out for, and what are the what are the signals that you're either doing really well or that you need to make some adjustments.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and within the income statement, um the key the key things we look at are your gross margin.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: So how does how how does what you're selling compare to the cost of production?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's your labor, the overhead associated with your production, and then all the the ingredients.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: So your cogs is another key.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: The cogs is kind of the biggest part of that gross margin for a brewery.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: So understanding how you're doing on your gross margins, and so as an illustration, um, that's been an area where we've really managed to see some big improvements in the past year, couple of years.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen some relief in the price of aluminum, we've seen some relief in the price of the base grain, um, and we made some adjustments to suppliers, like we switched our can supplier because we found we could switch to uh another manufacturer that was dream come true.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: They were closer, so they had lower shipping costs, they had a newer plant, so the quality was higher.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: And bingo, number three, the overall cost of producing the can was lower than our previous supplier.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's not always going to work out that easily to just pick a new supplier to provide an equivalent um set of goods for less money, but it's something you always got to be on the lookout for.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, can I get these hops from a different supplier for less, or do I have a long-term relationship with an existing supplier where I could say, you know, maybe there's some room to either negotiate um on future pricing or ask, hey, I know that I'm gonna, I can commit to 90% of what I think I'm gonna produce next year.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Could I get a better price if we contract for that amount?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it took us quite a while to get into contracting for some of our key goods, like the like basemalt and cans.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hops was the first one we started contracting because even back in 2008, if you didn't, that was the year we had a hop crisis.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: So even as a one-barrel brewery, there were some hops I couldn't get if I didn't have them on on contract.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so those those are the really the key things I look at is cash, you know, your gross margins, and then that operating income on a monthly and quarterly basis.
• 48:05
  Kary Shumway: Love it.
• 48:05
  Kary Shumway: Yeah, that's great stuff.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: And cash flow forecast too.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the other key, that's the third key component to your um to your budgeting and um financial review.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 48:18
  Kary Shumway: So I've got a ton more questions, but time for us to wrap up.
• 48:22
  Kary Shumway: So I want to ask you maybe one final question.
• 48:25
  Kary Shumway: And this will be kind of one financial habit that every brewery should adopt.
• 48:30
  Kary Shumway: And you've mentioned a lot of them, so you could even just choose one of those.
• 48:33
  Kary Shumway: But if a brewery owner or manager is listening right now and they're thinking, if I could implement just one financial habit maybe over the next 30 days, what would you guide them to think about?
• 48:44
  Kary Shumway: Like if they're kind of starting from scratch and they really haven't dug in on the finances, like what's where should they start?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think cadence, like getting on a regular schedule to look at your financials, deciding what you're look what you're gonna look at, start with that, start with that PL.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, look at it monthly.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're just starting the practice, maybe you want to start looking at it at the close of every week to start developing that cadence.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then once you're then once you get a sense of um, you know, how you're performing, you know, and you should be looking at your um your actuals versus your budget or your projections.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have a budget that's detailed down to monthly projections, I would strongly recommend getting there.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even for a real small business, it it's really key.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just takes an Excel spreadsheet.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I did it in the beginning.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we did budgeting and all of our financial reporting.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: I basically handed off a set of Excel spreadsheets to my accountants and they did the taxes off of it.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, actually, it's not QuickBooks, but you have a pretty good tool.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then as you grow, you're gonna want to get into QuickBooks or um another financial accounting software.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: But cadence would be my one habit that I would recommend for folks that aren't already on a you know regular schedule of periodically reviewing their financials.
• 50:13
  Kary Shumway: I love it.
• 50:14
  Kary Shumway: Sean, this has been great.
• 50:16
  Kary Shumway: Really appreciate your time, your experience, your expertise.
• 50:19
  Kary Shumway: Um folks who are listening that might want to learn more about Lawson's.
• 50:24
  Kary Shumway: Imagine you have a website.
• 50:25
  Kary Shumway: Is there any place you'd you'd like to Lawson's Finest.com.
• 50:29
  Kary Shumway: Lawson's Finest.com.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's a brand new website, too.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: We just launched it a few weeks ago with a with a fresh face and a great tune-up.
• 50:36
  Kary Shumway: That's awesome.
• 50:37
  Kary Shumway: Sean, thanks so much for the time.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks, Gary.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Be well.
• 50:42
  Kary Shumway: Thank you for listening to the Kraft Brewery Financial Training Podcast, where we combine beer and numbers so that you can improve financial results in your brewery.
• 50:50
  Kary Shumway: For more resources, tools, guides, and online courses, visit Craft Brewery Financial Training.com.
• 50:57
  Kary Shumway: And don't forget to sign up for the world famous Kraft Brewery Financial Training newsletter.
• 51:02
  Kary Shumway: Until next time, get out there and improve financial results in your brewery today.