Sam Adams Founder Turned a Kitchen Recipe Into a Billion-Dollar Brand

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

**Jim Koch** (0:26)
We'd come show up with an ingredient and we'd make a beer from it. We wouldn't have any notice what the ingredient was. I think one time we showed up with 40 pounds of beef heart.

**Dan Bova** (0:37)
Oh, my God.

**Jim Koch** (0:39)
Yes. It was the first non-vegan beer.

**Dan Bova** (0:43)
Did you like it?

**Jim Koch** (0:44)
Yeah, it was really good. They sold it out at Bloomingdale. They didn't tell everybody that this has 40 pounds of beef heart.

**Dan Bova** (0:59)
Hey everyone, welcome to How Success Happens. I'm Dan Bova, writer and editor at entrepreneur.com.
So America is about to celebrate its 250th birthday. And besides Superman, I can't think of a person who better embodies the American spirit than today's guest. He's fiercely independent, built something from nothing, and has relentlessly helped us all in our collective pursuit of happiness. So please welcome the founder of Sam Adams Beer Company, Jim Koch. Jim, how are you?

**Jim Koch** (1:34)
Well, I'm doing great, but I make beer for a living. If I'm not doing great, then life really sucks.

**Dan Bova** (1:42)
Awesome. So Jim, you and I, I've had the pleasure of speaking to you a couple of times over the years. And I wanna go back to the first time that I spoke to you.
I was an editor at Maxim Magazine, and we were having a home brewing contest. And you were our judge, and you had the excellent taste, and you picked me as the winner. And my prize was this.

**Jim Koch** (2:11)
Ooh, yes.

**Dan Bova** (2:13)
Utopias.

**Jim Koch** (2:14)
Yes.

**Dan Bova** (2:15)
Official. 2009, still unopened. It's got the little sliding doors.

**Jim Koch** (2:21)
There's my man, Sam.

**Dan Bova** (2:23)
It sits probably on my mantle here.

**Jim Koch** (2:27)
Well, you earned that prize, Dan. You had a really nice beer. You're a fellow brewer.

**Dan Bova** (2:33)
Thank you. Now, you've taken brewing a little farther than I have, but there's still time for me, right?

**Jim Koch** (2:41)
Yeah, you're young. You're mature and developed.

**Dan Bova** (2:45)
Well, actually, I want to start off with, a lot of people are familiar with the brand story, but it's always just so awesome to hear it, because this wasn't something you started doing when you were 18 years old. This involved a career pivot for you. Can you talk to us about your decision to leave what I believe was a pretty cushy consulting career to go about your own thing?

**Jim Koch** (3:11)
Yeah.
It was one of those game-changing decisions, I guess. I was 34 years old and I'd been a management consultant for a pretty good consulting firm called Boston Consulting Group, which was small then, but it's now like 30,000 people. I think it was 300 people when I was there. I liked it, but I didn't want to do it for the rest of my life.
I'd been there six or seven years and it was a time when you had to make that decision. It was a little bit scary, but one of the things I learned from that is, things that are scary are not necessarily dangerous. In retrospect, the safe, sort of secure thing to do was the most dangerous, which was to stay there in a job that was okay but not great, and get to like 65 years old and look back and say, damn, I wasted my life. I shouldn't have started that brewery. So the thing that looked a little scary really wasn't that dangerous because I had a good education.
I wasn't going to go homeless. I was just going to lose some money. So when I got to that realization of the really dangerous thing here is to not do the scary thing, that you put me a piece. I raised a little bit of money from friends and family. It was took me a weekend to raise it and raised it in $10,000, you know, bits and got 14 people. And with that, I started what has become, I started brewing Sam Adams. I started in my kitchen. I had a business plan which is embarrassing. To look back on, because, you know, I was a management consultant. I suppose I know how to do business plans and stuff like that. My business plan was, it would take five years, but we would eventually get to about a million, $200,000 in revenue. That was going to be, it could be eight people.