Driven By Podcast

36. Pushing It To See Its Potential with Davin and Kellan Bartosch

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My guests this week are Wiseacre Brewery Founders Davin and Kellan Bartosch.

Davin and Kellan launched Wiseacre in 2013 and it has been a huge success. They quit their jobs, found a partner, took out personal loans and have built one of the most well known craft breweries in the Southeast. After one year of opening, their Tiny Bomb beer won the Bronze Medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2014.

I wanted to have a conversation with Davin and Kellan to learn how they have generated such momentum in a crowded craft beer market. This conversation doesn’t disappoint. We cover:

  • Going all in at the beginning
  • Building Wiseacre their way
  • Living with challenges and ambiguity
  • Their plans for growth
  • And more!

Please enjoy my conversation with Davin and Kellan Bartosch!

RECAP

45 secs Beer critics

2:00 You can’t please everyone

3:15 Taking things personally

4:09 Where it started

6:34 The PitBull Named Carlito

10:15 When Tiny Bomb Hit It Big

12:35 Why Memphis Water Matters

14:33 Something Always Goes Wrong

15:02 Founding Brewmaster loves lager and that drives it

15:38 Leveraging their relationship

18:31 Passion can lead to bad decisions

21:37 How to grow a craft brewery

22:18 Doing the job I did before except doing it for myself

22:22 Quantifiable goals and how to measure them

24:13 The power of design

24:50 We both took out two loans each

25:38 Good debt and forecasting money

28:55 Our experience and our instincts got us through

30:18 Telling stories

32:00 I’m better at working by myself than with other people

33:25 Now we’re just reacting

34:05 Cast the vision and what do we need to change to become that vision

35:03 Get going in direction and others execute

37:45 I’m more focused than I was at the beginning

41:00 We’re in a crunch right now

45:07 We have to be okay with grey area

58:00 Natural Progression

59:03 Our identity is Memphis

1:01:01 Approach things with a sense of humor

1:03:10 Be willing to put your time in

1:04:10 Lessons learned from upbringing

RESOURCES