Live Episode! New Belgium Brewing Company: Kim Jordan

In 1991 newlyweds Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch took out a second mortgage on their home in Fort Collins, Colorado to start a craft brewery in their basement. Jeff had been inspired by the fruit and spice-infused beers he had tasted on a bike trip to Belgium, so they named their company New Belgium, and launched a beer with the whimsical name, Fat Tire. Today, New Belgium Brewing Company is one of the largest craft brewers in the U. S., and Kim Jordan remains one of the few women founders in a male-dominated industry. Recorded live in Boulder, Colorado. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Guy Raz?

  Hey, everyone. Really quick before we start the show, I have some big news to share. We have two more live shows coming up. First, I'm going to talk with Emily Weiss, the founder of Glossier. That one's happening on November 1st in New York City. And then, on December 5th, in Los Angeles, I'll sit down with Michael Dubin, the co-founder of Dollar Shave Club. Both shows are supported by American Express, and tickets go on sale this Friday, September 14th. So just go to nprpresents.org to get your tickets. And I hope to see you in New York or LA, or why not both?

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Early on, I was putting together a plan for the bank that we had been using personally. And our banker said, you know, the way that you've sort of dribbled this paperwork in makes me think that you know nothing about running a business, and I'm not even going to take your loan to the committee.

• 1:12Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:26Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on this episode, how Kim Jordan helped turn her husband's basement home brewery into New Belgium, one of the biggest craft beer makers in America.

• 1:45Guy Raz?

  If you look at the founding stories of companies like Amazon, or Apple, or Google, you will find a version of the same story. And that story begins, where else? In a garage. Jeff Bezos started in his garage. Larry and Sergey began in a garage in Palo Alto. And the two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, built the first Apple computer in a shared garage. And of course, there are variations of the theme. Damon John started FUBU out of the trunk of his car. J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books at a cafe in Edinburgh. You've heard the stories, and some of them are apocryphal, embellished a little bit years later to add mystique to the founding narrative.

• 2:28Guy Raz?

  But this story you're about to hear really did start out at home, in the basement, to be exact. And the basement wasn't just the office, but it was, for all intents and purposes, the factory as well. In 1991, Kim Jordan and her husband Jeff Levish were newlyweds living in Fort Collins, Colorado. And Jeff was a really good amateur beer maker. He was so good that friends would encourage him to sell his home brew. But Kim, she had bigger plans. And even though she thought she could turn their basement brewery into a business, she never thought it would become one of the biggest craft beer makers in the US, a company that's been valued at anywhere from half a billion to a billion dollars today.

• 3:13Guy Raz?

  And how she got there? Well, Kim Jordan sat down with me to tell her story in front of a live audience at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado. So, welcome to the show.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks to all of you for coming.

• 3:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah. This is a pumped up crowd. People are really proud of Colorado makers, right? Super fan, yeah. Yeah. All right, so let's start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about, you really grew up in Washington DC as a kid, right?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much. My dad was involved in political administration, so we lived in Sacramento. He was Pat Brown's press secretary. This is Jerry's father, so that gives you a sense of how old I am.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And Pat lost to Ronald Reagan. And so we moved to Washington DC because Lyndon Johnson was the president and he was hiring Democrats for his administration.

• 4:22Guy Raz?

  And I read that as a child, like as a very small child, you were taken to like pretty big rallies, like even the MLK march on Washington, like you must have been, did you, were you taken there as a kid?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  We didn't go to the MLK march. I did march with Cesar Chavez in, in the, you know, San Joaquin Valley. And then we did later marches on Washington.

• 4:49Guy Raz?

  So as a kid, pretty solidly liberal household?

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also with a real bent for community organizing activism. You know, we did go to marches and we did, my mom was a social worker and she worked in child protection. So occasionally we would have kids in our house that had no place to go, so, yeah.

• 5:16Guy Raz?

  And as a kid, I mean, growing up in a house that was really about policy and, and child protection and things like that, did you talk about entrepreneurial stuff? I mean, was that even like a glimmer in your, in your mind at all?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:32Guy Raz?

  Full stop.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  I, I think it's good to set a tiny bit of context because I think business is different today than it might have been then. I'm not sure of that. You know, the profit motive was something to be a little bit suspicious of. Business was not something that our people did.

• 5:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You, you went to a Quaker high school. Did that like have any influence on you or was it just sort of, you know, the three or four years and kind of moved on?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  I actually think it had a profound influence on me. George Fox, who is the father of American Quakerism, had a saying that was on the wall of our. Of our cafeteria, which is let your life speak. And so, you know, that notion, every day we had chores that we had to do and every day we went to meeting and, and that notion of sort of attending to the collective, to the community, really ran deep and made a lot of sense.

• 6:44Guy Raz?

  So you're in DC, you're Washington DC, you graduated high school. How did you end up in Colorado? What's the story?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I graduated from high school when I was 16 and I lived for a little while outside of DC with some roommates and I had a friend who lived in Fort Collins and I thought, well, I had a hundred dollars. I have a hundred dollars and I have a car and I have a friend I can stay with and I packed up my Volvo 544, it's the turtle back one. And I always knew when I moved from Sacramento to DC that I was more of a Western person and I wanted to move back to the West.

• 7:29Guy Raz?

  So this would be like the late 70s. You go to?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:33Guy Raz?

  To Colorado.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  I moved to Fort Collins on July 10th, 1976.

• 7:40Guy Raz?

  And soon after that enrolled at the university?

• 7:44Speaker 01

  No, I did that over several years later. I went on the self-paying plan. I was raised to be really self-sufficient and competent and I just kind of decided I wanted to do that, so.

• 7:59Guy Raz?

  When you were, when you got to college, what did you think you, you were gonna do with your life?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Start a brewery and, yeah, no, not really. Yeah, no, I didn't really know, but my family were big believers in a liberal arts education. I'm a big believer in a liberal arts education. I think it makes you a good thinker and so it really didn't matter to me what I was going to do. It mattered to me that I had that experience.

• 8:33Guy Raz?

  So when you graduated, what did you, what did you do?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  I started working as a social worker in a program for low-income, single parents.

• 8:43Guy Raz?

  In Fort Collins?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  In Fort Collins and a town close by.

• 8:47Guy Raz?

  Did you like it?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  I did. Did I miss it when I started in this? Not so much.

• 8:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah. It's, I mean, it's, it's, it's tough work, right?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  But I would say that social work is a generalist degree. So you learn a lot about a lot of working with people. And it's also systems theory. And those two things were the perfect setup for the next thing.

• 9:13Guy Raz?

  Tell me how you, you're in Fort Collins. It's the eighties, right? Early eighties. When and how did you meet Jeff Leibish?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  We met a few times through friends. And then we met at a party and he, and we just sort of started like, hey, you want to go on a hike?

• 9:33Guy Raz?

  But you did not bond over beer or anything like that, right?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Not the first time, but the first sort of date we had, he brought a six pack of beer.

• 9:41Guy Raz?

  Oh, nice. Very romantic.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:44Guy Raz?

  And what, like, what was Jeff doing at the time?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Jeff is an electrical engineer. And he was doing benchtop engineering. I can give you sort of some blah, blah, blah words, but they mean almost nothing to me.

• 9:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah. He was testing machines?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Things on benchtops, yeah.

• 10:04Guy Raz?

  Right. And so you guys started dating and you hit it up, obviously. You liked him. And how long, you know, between the time you met him and the time you guys decided to get married?

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Almost two years.

• 10:21Guy Raz?

  And so you, I guess, were in your twenties or sort of?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  I was thirty-one-ish.

• 10:29Guy Raz?

  When you guys got married?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:31Guy Raz?

  So you are doing social work. Jeff is testing machines out in a way we don't quite understand.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  It's not germane to the story particularly.

• 10:45Guy Raz?

  I guess around the time you met him, or around the time you really started dating, he had just come back from a trip to Belgium? Is that right?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yep. And he took one of his mountain bikes with him on that trip, and that's how Fat Tire got his name. He tried a beer, and he was a home brewer, and he'd started winning awards for his home brew. And he started brewing a beer that was to emulate a beer that he'd had there. And he named it Fat Tire as a home brew, which is kind of a common home brew thing to try to give things clever names. When we started the brewery, people said, "Oh, my God, you cannot name that beer Fat Tire. That is the worst name ever." And you're like, "Well, we're gonna take our chances with this one."

• 11:37Guy Raz?

  Explain this to me. When he comes back from that bike trip, and he starts to try and emulate this Belgian beer, what did he say to you? Or what was your impression of it? Like, what made it unique?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Well, you have to remember, again, kind of take yourself back. Many of you probably weren't drinking beer then, but take yourself back to that time where beer was still really kind of, you know, the drink of the knucklehead. And it was, there was not, you didn't think about what glassware do you want to put your beer in? Or what might you eat with the beer? It was, we would go to parties, and we'd say, "Well, we'll bring some beer." And people would say, "Oh, that's okay. You know, we have a keg of Coors Light," or something. And it was really kind of an uphill battle to convince people that beer with flavor. And, you know...

• 12:41Speaker 01

  I do, I want to say though, because the big two brewers in this country make technically excellent beer. And I never want to sort of discount that, because they're very skilled at it. But they're not craft brewers. And they don't really have sort of that gut feel for how you might start a movement where people are talking about, what am I gonna drink with that?

• 13:10Guy Raz?

  But I'm trying to understand, how did Jeff convince you? I mean, clearly, he knew about beer, he was brewing it. But how did you, how were you convinced that this Belgian beer he was making was special?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  The beer was good. We had not yet had the, we're gonna start this brewery conversation. But that conversation, we were sort of right at the crux of being married. And I just remember thinking, there is no way that I'm gonna say to my brand-new husband, no, you have to go to that benchtop and do that thing you do, whatever it is. Because we have to have this paycheck. It's like, sure, let's try this thing.

• 13:55Guy Raz?

  He went to you and he said, hey, Kim, I wanna brew this beer and like, sell it?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  I wanna start a brewery, yeah.

• 14:03Guy Raz?

  And you said, okay, where?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Right, well, that was, so, so we took a second mortgage out on our house.

• 14:12Guy Raz?

  That seems like a big leap, to saying, sure, let's take a second mortgage out on our house. With no, like, worry about...

• 14:20Speaker 01

  You know, I wasn't worried about it. I always felt like we had these daytime gigs, and we could always go back to those if we needed to. And this seemed like a really fun, interesting, challenging... The part that I maybe didn't quite factor in is, the first few years of our marriage would be totally absorbed in stainless steel, and hops, and malt bills, and, you know, that part I didn't yet have a fix on.

• 14:56Guy Raz?

  So you decided to take a second mortgage. What did you need the money to do? Because this was still, you were going to build this out in your home, right?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  We had to build the basement and then the floors above it. And Jeff designed all of our initial equipment, so that saved a lot of money. We had a dairy manufacturer in Denver fabricate it for us. The door to the basement was too small when we got the first equipment in, so we had to cut the door out so we could get the equipment in.

• 15:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And was there a vision? Like, did you and Jeff sit down and say, "Okay, we're going to brew this beer in the basement and make some money and then get bigger and bigger and bigger?" Or was it just like, "Yeah, let's brew beer in our basement and see what happens"?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Well, I think this is fundamental to our story. Before Jeff and I ever made a barrel of beer, we went on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park and we said we were going to be four things. We were going to produce world-class Belgian-style beers. We were going to be environmental stewards. We were going to promote beer culture. And we were going to have fun. And you'll notice there was nothing in there about coworkers and there was nothing in there about customers because at that point, we didn't have coworkers or customers. So it honestly didn't occur to me to think about including them.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  So we did another pass-through that when it was like, "Oh, there's some pretty significant pieces missing here."

• 16:26Guy Raz?

  So, explain, because both you and Jeff still had day jobs.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Jeff did not. I had a day job.

• 16:33Guy Raz?

  He quit his job.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:35Guy Raz?

  You had your day job. And he was sort of like dealing with the beer brewing all day and then you would come home and start to deal with it at night?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Bottle beer. I would work four days a week. I had good insurance and we had one kid, trying to have a second kid. And so I had good insurance and we needed the cash flow. And so I would work four days a week. And on the fifth day, I would call all of our customers in the morning and say, "Okay, we have this beer and this beer and this beer. What would you like?" And then in the afternoon, I would deliver all the beer.

• 17:09Guy Raz?

  Who were your customers? Were they people who already kind of knew Jeff's reputation?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  They were both bars and restaurants and in Colorado beer, wine and spirits are sold in independent liquor stores, which was key for us because you could build a relationship with someone.

• 17:27Guy Raz?

  And what would you do? Would you go door to door to these bars and with samples of the beer and say, "Hey, me and Jeff are making this beer and can I pour you some?"

• 17:36Speaker 01

  At the time that we started, there was a brew pub in Fort Collins and there was a brewery that made draft beer. And so we decided to focus on packaged beer. It was a natural because there was really nothing in the marketplace in our part of the world like that. So it was not really a hard sell. I would call in the morning, deliver beer in the afternoon, go pick up my kid from school and he would, poor kid, knew the town by the liquor stores for a while.

• 18:13Guy Raz?

  Can you describe this because I do not have any idea how to make beer. How were you, were you like pouring beer through funnels into bottles and capping the bottles one by one?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Well, we were capping them one by one. I mean, it was a very bootstrapped situation. Jeff actually designed, he built kind of a frame to put four bottles in with a food grade rubber tubing with a peristaltic pump so it would push the beer into the bottles. And so at night I would also bottle and label beers, label each one and then, you know, hand cap.

• 18:57Guy Raz?

  How similar is Fat Tire today to what Jeff was brewing in 1991?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Well, it's generally very similar. One of the things that I always want to remind people though is that beer is food. It's an agricultural product and so you have changes in the characteristic of a hop or the malt bill because, you know, it was a wet year or it was a dry year. So it really is an art form that takes both the ability to have a gut instinct and a scientific mind.

• 19:39Guy Raz?

  So, in the first year, presumably, I mean, there's a limit to how much beer you could make and sell, right?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Well, we were so small that there was a limit to how much we could make, but we could have sold a lot more. I mean, in Telluride, Telluride Liquors had a sign in the store that said, "If you're going to Fort Collins, we'll pay for your gas."

• 20:05Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  If you'll stop at New Belgium and pick up 10 cases of beer.

• 20:09Guy Raz?

  How did they find out? Was it just word of mouth?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Just, you know, you go to some festivals, you serve beer at events, and yeah, so...

• 20:20Guy Raz?

  But in that, in that first year or two, did you ever have any anxiety over whether the thing wasn't gonna work? I mean, it sounds like people loved the beer, like it was getting a lot of attention, and, you know, people were driving for miles around to come and get it, but, you know, it's still tricky to run a business, right?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:41Guy Raz?

  Did you have any concern that maybe this thing might not work out?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  No, my anxiety was more, if I had anxiety, it was more keeping up with all of it, because there was just a lot to do. You know, you start hiring people, and in the beginning, they're walking through your living room. Later on, we moved to a second location. I did get pregnant with our second son, and, um...

• 21:08Guy Raz?

  It was in 1992, I think, right?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  In 92. So, things like, we went to the Great American Beer Festival. In those days, you served your own beer. So, I served beer on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I had Nick on Wednesday, and we moved into our second brewery on the following Monday.

• 21:32Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  So...

• 21:34Guy Raz?

  Amazing.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  I... Thank you. [applause]

• 21:41Speaker 01

  I look back and think those people must have been like, oh, my god, don't let her give me any beer because she's going to explode here. So, yeah.

• 21:50Guy Raz?

  And all of this was financed by the second mortgage? The money you guys got out of that?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Well, once we weren't sure we were going to make payroll, so I called my parents and asked if we could borrow $5,000, and they loaned us money. We took out some credit cards. In those days, they sent you things that said, "You've been pre-approved for a line of credit, especially for engineers, less so for social workers."

• 22:22Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  And so we took out some of those.

• 22:26Guy Raz?

  Max, that's some credit cards.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Insert American Express ad here.

• 22:33Guy Raz?

  OK, I swear to you, we did not ask Kim to make that little joke. But in actual fact, this live event is sponsored by a certain credit card company. So we're going to take a quick break to hear a bit from them. And when we come back, how New Belgium expanded out of Kim's basement to become a craft beer powerhouse, and how Kim Jordan eventually sold the entire company to her employees. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 23:17Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's 1992, and Jeff Levish and Kim Jordan move New Belgium from the basement into a new space. And at that point, Kim finally quits her job as a social worker to focus on beer full time. And of course, they're doing all of this not just as busy But as husband and wife with two small children.

• 23:44Guy Raz?

  What about like the dynamic of being parents, raising children, and also running this business? I mean, how did you navigate that? Was it?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Cakewalk.

• 23:55Guy Raz?

  Really? Is it really? It was easy?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  No, I mean, it was a lot of work. I also really...

• 24:03Speaker 01

  You have kids? I kind of can't believe you fell for that.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  It was a lot of work. I wanted to be a mom. I volunteer... I was a soccer coach. I volunteered in my kids' school. I worked... The good news is, as a self-employed person, you can flex your schedule. And then you... I would go to Kinko's at night and work on, you know, point of sale and marketing things.

• 24:31Guy Raz?

  When Jeff... Both you and Jeff worked at the company. I mean, did you argue? Or was it pretty, you know?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  This is not therapy, right? I'm just checking to see if, you know, I'm like reliving my past here. Sometimes we argued. And I would say like, that is really a bad idea. You know, we really need to try to have these disagreements in other places. Because there's a lot, you know, personal quirks, working styles, financial pressures, hiring more people. It's a lot to do, a lot going on.

• 25:14Guy Raz?

  Despite any tension, I mean, the business was growing. I mean, you were... You guys were winning awards. You were selling more beer. 1995, you moved to a bigger...

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Our current brewery, yeah.

• 25:24Guy Raz?

  Current facility. So how... By the way, how are you, at this point, financing the company? All from revenue?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  A lot from revenue, but also traditional bank financing.

• 25:37Guy Raz?

  So you didn't take any outside equity?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  No, which is also a fundamental thing for us. You know, I understand in some organizations, people really need to sort of bring in outside investors. But for us, I really wanted to kind of have our destiny in our own control. And a bank doesn't want to run your business. They want you to run your business well and pay them back.

• 26:03Guy Raz?

  But it's hard to get a bank loan.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  We failed a couple of times. Early on, I was putting together a plan for the bank that we had been using personally. And they'd say, "Well, you also need to give us this." So I would put that together and give that to them as well. And our banker said, "You know, the way that you've sort of dribbled this paperwork in makes me think that you know nothing about running a business, and I'm not even going to take your loan to the committee."

• 26:37Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  So.

• 26:39Guy Raz?

  So. So how were you? So eventually, you were able to convince banks to give you loans, based on the fact that you were growing, right? And your revenue was growing?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  We did. And we also built all of our own automation. Every single motherboard, every solder, every wire, which was Jeff's strength back to that benchtop thing I don't know so much about. He was really good at that. And because we had to cut a couple of million dollars out of the total project in order to feel comfortable with the amount of money we were borrowing.

• 27:23Guy Raz?

  Do you remember how much that project cost?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 27:26Guy Raz?

  How much?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Well, the building was about 10 million, and then the equipment was another 10 million.

• 27:35Guy Raz?

  Wow. What, sort of, put this into context, because I guess around the mid-'90s, the craft brewing phenomenon really just started to explode. Did it feel like there was a wave that you guys were riding?

• 27:51Speaker 01

  You know, we were at the front of the wave, and we were leaders in the industry. I have been a part of the community of, it is a movement in a lot of ways. A lot of my very close friends come from this industry. We go on vacations together, and we check in with one another. And that's unusual, I think, in business. And we had what we felt like was a really solid management team. We had a really great way of developing strategy. So, you know, '96, we were five years old.

• 28:29Guy Raz?

  Wow. I guess, and that was the year where it became clear that Jeff probably... Wasn't the right person to continue as the brewmaster. You guys went out to the original Belgium, to Old Belgium.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:42Guy Raz?

  And found a brewmaster and convinced this guy, Peter Buchard?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Peter Buchard, my pal Peter Buchard.

• 28:49Guy Raz?

  To come and move out to the US. What, how did that happen?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  We had sponsored some speakers at the Craft Brewers Conference in Boston to come talk to American craft brewers about Belgium beers and Belgian styles. And we were having this dinner and Peter was sitting next to me and I thought, well, I'm just gonna see how this goes. And so I said to him, yeah, you know, we're hiring for a brewmaster and, you know, we talked about this and that and left it at that. And I came back to Fort Collins and was working at the brewery. And someone said, this guy from Belgium is on the phone for you. And I picked up the phone and it was Peter and I was like, yes.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  And he said, my wife and I are in Rhode Island and we thought we would come drive to the brewery.

• 29:42Guy Raz?

  To Fort Collins.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  You know, it's a big country.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  So they drove all the way to Fort Collins.

• 29:53Guy Raz?

  And was anybody really making these kinds of beers in 1996?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  No, well, we were the first brewery in the United States to specialize in Belgian style beers. The first three years that we took our beer to the Great American Beer Festival, they didn't even judge our beers because they had no categories for Belgian style beers. So somebody took them home and had a great time and, but, you know, like, we got these, we got these, the G A B F gives you judges tasting notes. And we got these notes back that were like, yeah, we, we didn't taste them because we don't have categories for those.

• 30:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So, once, once Peter becomes your brewmaster, I'm sure it's a trade secret, but like, just in general, was he bringing in like coriander and orange peel and lemon peels and?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Well, we were already doing that with some of our core beers. But one of the things that I now see in retrospect is that just by naming ourselves New Belgium Brewing Company, we gave ourselves license to do so many things because, you know, we could use fruit and coriander and crazy yeast strains and things that were very new to the American beer scene.

• 31:11Guy Raz?

  So you're growing. Two thousand, two thousand and one, Jeff leaves the company. You know, unusually doing so well. It was a dream of his. Do you know why he left?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  I think he wanted to do other things. And that sort of day-to-day process was less interesting to him than that kind of early designing of things.

• 31:40Guy Raz?

  I shouldn't bury the lead, but eventually your marriage ended and you still have a very civil relationship. You've got children that you raised together and I guess you just even saw him recently. Was that period of time after he left, was it easier for you? Was it challenging? I mean...

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Well, to go back to Peter Buchart for a moment, one of the things I've heard Peter Buchart say is that I have never seen one person grow so much as you grew in that time.

• 32:16Guy Raz?

  As you grew.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Meaning me, yeah.

• 32:18Guy Raz?

  What did he mean by that?

• 32:20Speaker 01

  I just, you know, when all of a sudden it's all yours, there's no ambiguity. Are you the boss? Are you not the boss? Who's the boss?

• 32:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  And I don't think that leaders should discount that. You know, you're like, oh, we're all equal and it doesn't really matter who the boss is. No, in fact, it does matter who the boss is.

• 32:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And there were a lot of things, open book management, employee ownership, we had win power, you know, we were doing a lot of really fun stuff, both in beer and in business practice. And I have been really transparent and honest and vulnerable. My coworkers will tell you that I'm a sap and I cry easily.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I have stood up in front of them and talked about getting a divorce.

• 33:10Guy Raz?

  You stood up in front of the whole company and talked about your divorce?

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've stood up in front of them and said, "I'm looking at how we're gonna have this sort of succession planning and turn of the founders liquidity wheel and here's what I see as the pros and cons." And I have tried to really make nearly nothing off limits. And I've also, I think, been really human about it. And I think there are certainly people who might sort of poo-poo that within our organization, but I think there are a

• 33:50Speaker 01

  lot more people who understand that I have tried to be really real and human and care.

• 34:04Guy Raz?

  We had Jim Cook on the show about a year and a half ago, and he said that at a certain point, as it became bigger, beer snobs did not want to drink it anymore. You're not as big as Sam Adams, but you're big. I mean, you are a big craft brewery. Do you also have that issue where you've got, eh, Fat Tire, you know, they're too big, New Belgium's too big, like, I'm going to my local...

• 34:31Speaker 01

  I'm totally sure we do. I mean, we will put our wood-aged and sour beers up against anyone. Yeah, we're a bigger brewery, but we do a lot of, you know, from the silly to the sublime. We do a lot of really fun, interesting things. And I don't want to be counted out where that's concerned.

• 34:59Guy Raz?

  Do you, what's your annual revenue now? It's like $230, $240?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  We don't generally talk about that publicly.

• 35:05Guy Raz?

  I think you have an open book, transparent...

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. When you get a job, I'll be happy to talk to you about it.

• 35:19Guy Raz?

  But it's in the 200 to 250 range, right?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like to say quarter billion.

• 35:24Guy Raz?

  Quarter billion.

• 35:33Guy Raz?

  Do you remember ever getting to a point where you just thought, "We started this in our basement and we're doing 10 million a year now, or we're doing 20 million a year." Do you ever remember thinking that? Or were you just constantly working and just focused?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  No, I totally have pinch me moments even like today. You know, when I walk-- where it really hits me is when I walk out of the brewery and I watch all these people, you know, sitting in our beer garden, playing roly-boly or just sitting on the front patio or playing with their kids on the lawn. I have this feeling like, wow, look at this thing. Look at this touching people's lives through something as great as beer. I'm still in awe.

• 36:22Guy Raz?

  So, pretty early on, you guys decided that you would give ownership, some ownership equity in the company to your employees. I mean, was there sort of-- was there a specific idea behind that? Did you think that's how we're going to attract good people? Or was there another reason why you decided to do that?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  The early days of New Belgium, it took all of us to work really hard. And I really felt this deep sense of wanting to acknowledge that my coworkers were-- you know, those were 14, 16-hour days. You can't bottle a half a batch of beer and say, "Well, we'll pick that up tomorrow." It's a live food product and you have to finish. If the machine breaks down six times or 20 times in between the beginning and the end, you stay and you finish it. And it was important to me-- we had talked to people who were experts, who said, "Well, you know,

• 37:31Speaker 01

  it's really customary to give management ownership, but you really don't want to give, you know, a forklift driver ownership."

• 37:39Guy Raz?

  That's what your accountants were telling you or advisors?

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Right, advisors. And I said, "No, I really want to give the forklift driver ownership because to me--

• 37:51Speaker 01

  We were building this community. We were all in this together. So we started off with a phantom stock plan. Every six months, we would allocate shares pro rata to our coworkers. And we would make them stand up in front of all of the current owners. It seems bizarre now, but... And like speak to us about why they wanted to be an owner. And we'd ask them questions, not just Jeff and me, but all of the owners. So, "How long are you gonna be here? And what kind of skill are you gonna work on in the next six months?" And those kinds of things.

• 38:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:33Guy Raz?

  And then, eventually, you decided to sell your entire stake to your employees. You do not own any of New Belgium today, right?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Except as an ESOP account holder within the ESOP trust. Just as my other coworkers are, I own that portion. But other than that, no.

• 38:55Guy Raz?

  So 100% of the company basically became an employee-owned company. What...

• 39:09Speaker 01

  I wanted to see, how do we test this model? Where people in America get to own something, where they build value. They're all in it together to do this thing. And it's this engine, and you add love, and you add beer. I mean, beer's great. And it's this engine that builds this palpable... I mean, I've had thousands of people say to me, "I came to New Belgium for a tour, and you can just tell that these people are into it. They like this thing."

• 39:53Speaker 01

  We spend a lot of time at this thing called work. And it should feel good.

• 40:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:02Guy Raz?

  Um, it's, I think it goes without saying, you are one of the few women leaders in the beer industry.

• 40:19Guy Raz?

  Was it ever difficult? Did you ever face? I mean, you must have spent so many years going to conferences and trade meetings, and you were one of the few women in the hall.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  So I was, we had two trade associations for smaller brewers in the United States, and I was the only person that was on both boards and the only woman. So like, one woman on two boards. So that's 30 men, one woman, two boards. Most craft brewers are really more enlightened on the spectrum of that kind of, you know, some of the things we read these days are kind of jaw-dropping, honestly. But I do think that gender bias is subtle and pervasive.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  And I think people who I love dearly sometimes don't really even realize, you know, friends of mine in the industry, occasionally I will think like, wow, did you just ask that? Or mansplaining right over the top of me? Or, and I'm pretty opinionated and strong, so I can hold my own, but you kind of have to be opinionated and strong and hold your own.

• 41:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Guy Raz?

  How much of what has happened to you and the success of your company and your own success, do you think is because of your skill and intelligence? And how much because of just luck?

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  You know, I think it is a combination of those things. And, you know, there's that sort of old saw about luck is how hard you work and timing. You know, we worked really hard. We didn't say, oh, you know, let's all take a week off and if there, I like to win. If there's a competitive advantage to be had, we're likely to push to try to prevail in that way.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  So it was all those things. It was simple stuff. It was hard work. It was timing. Fat Tire was a great name for a beer. So it's all that stuff put together.

• 42:45Guy Raz?

  Kim Jordan, founder of New Belgium. Thank you so much.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  It's been my pleasure.

• 42:51Guy Raz?

  Great to have you here.

• 43:00Guy Raz?

  Kim Jordan stepped down as CEO of New Belgium back in 2015, but she still serves as executive chair on the board. By the way, in addition to that employee ownership plan, New Belgium has some pretty cool perks for its workers. At your one-year anniversary, you get a brand-new cruiser-style bike, and some of the models have built-in bottle openers. And after five years at the company, you get an all-expense-paid trip to Belgium, where, of course, you can make a pilgrimage to the very bar in Bruges, where Jeff Levis got the idea to make his own Belgian-style beer.

• 43:37Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to this live episode of How I Built This, recorded at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman, with original music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Our live team in Boulder included Ali Prescott and Al Mannion. Our recording engineer was Andy Huether. Thanks also to Rachel Faulkner, Rund Abdelfatah, Noor Kutsi, Benjamin Klempe, Niva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is J.C. Howard. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.