Thirteen years ago this Saturday, we opened the doors on Halloween. Reformation Day. We had no real idea what we were doing.
Nick and I had been brewing near Waleska every third Friday for almost five years before that. But running a brewery and a taproom as an actual business turned out to be a different animal. Our first conference table was a discarded door sitting on two kegs. We printed keg collars on an inkjet. We were young, restless, and reformed, clawing our way to survive. Plenty of fails. We under-pitched yeast once and dumped thousands of dollars of Providence down the drain. Thirteen years later, the irony still stings.
I kept thinking about that messy version of us this past weekend in the Backyard at Cadence Fair.
It was close to flawless. Yellow jackets, some trash issues, a cold storage problem. That's the whole list. And my crew handled every one of them without me saying a word. I'm still processing that. It's a strange kind of blessing. There's something deeper to an experience when the pressure to perform is lifted.
Most of what I've learned as a boss since 2013 comes down to three words, said out loud. “I don't know.”
The first time I said them was to Nick, over a regulatory filing. All that paperwork was brand new to me, and so was having Big Brother all up in our business, federal and state. Getting every form right felt like life and death for the company. I didn't want to be the guy who sank Reformation over a clerical error. So I told him the truth. I don't know how to do this. I figured it would cost me. I figured he'd stop trusting me. It mostly didn't.
Everyone has a hot take these days. It's easy to fall into the trap of certainty, of needing to have all the answers. I do know some things. What I don't know, I try to learn. But leadership isn't built on knowing the most. It's built on trust. The deeper the trust, the deeper the connection. The deeper the connection, the more we know together. And when that's spread across a capable crew, almost any problem gets solved without the weight landing on one person.
That's what I watched happen this weekend, and I was glowing with pride. It wasn't perfect. Perfection is overrated. It was just a clear picture of who Reformation is, what we do, and why.
To everyone who came out to the Backyard, thank you. And to my crew, who planned Cadence Fair all year and pulled it off the Reformation way: I saw it. I felt it. You're the real rockstars.
If you've been with us for any part of these thirteen years, tell me a moment you remember. Drop it in the comments or hit reply. I'd love to hear it as we turn the page on another one.
Cheers.