Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two

by Jim Koch Narrated by Jim Koch

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER and named a 2016 Best Book of the Year by Inc., Business Insider, Forbes, and Amazon

Founder of The Boston Beer Company, brewer of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and a key catalyst of the American craft beer revolution, Jim Koch offers his unique perspective when it comes to business, beer, and turning your passion into a successful company or career.

In 1984, it looked like an unwinnable David and Goliath struggle: one guy against the mammoth American beer industry. When others scoffed at Jim Koch's plan to leave his consulting job and start a brewery that would challenge American palates, he chose a nineteenth-century family recipe and launched Samuel Adams. Now one of America's leading craft breweries, Samuel Adams has redefined the way Americans think about beer and helped spur a craft beer revolution.

In Quench Your Own Thirst, Koch offers unprecedented insights into the whirlwind ride from scrappy start-up to thriving public company. His innovative business model and refreshingly frank stories offer counterintuitive lessons that you can apply to business and to life.

Koch covers everything from finding your own Yoda to his theory on how a piece of string can teach you the most important lesson you'll ever learn about business. He also has surprising advice on sales, marketing, hiring, and company culture. Koch's anecdotes, quirky musings, and bits of wisdom go far beyond brewing. A fun, engaging guide for building a career or launching a successful business based on your passions, Quench Your Own Thirst is the key to the ultimate dream: being successful while doing what you love.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

12/21/2015
Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company and brewer of Samuel Adams beer, offers a worthy history of his company’s origins and the road to capturing a very respectable 1% of the American beer market. Koch was born into a family with five generations of brewers and became a successful management consultant. In 1984, he decided to resurrect the family brewing business using a recipe dating back to the 1860s. Within four years, the company was experiencing exponential growth. Koch both chronicles the company’s success and explores issues that many entrepreneurs wrestle with, including determining which kind of business to enter, and getting started once that decision is made. He recounts his struggles to get financing and find the right name; Liberty Tree, Sacred Cod, and Whipping Post were among the candidates before he finally settled on Samuel Adams. Other turning points include taking the company public, sustaining attacks from industry giants such as Anheuser-Busch, and handling the difficult departure of his founding partner, Rhonda Kallman. This is an engaging and well-written blend of stories from a beloved company’s founding and sound guidance on surmounting common dilemmas faced in business and in life. Agent: Jim Levine, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

"Quench Your Own Thirst is a frosty mug full of sound advice for turning passion into a great business."

—Tony Hsieh, New York Times bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

"Always true to himself, the author's belief in Samuel Adams and the people around him is what makes his story and philosophy so genuine and endearing. Koch's down-to-earth personality, business advice, and passion are good models for those interested in making their own ways. "

—Kirkus Reviews

“Quench Your Own Thirst introduces an engaging, down-to-earth, fifth-generation brew master who also happens to be a savvy, creative, disciplined business mastermind. Jim Koch’s story of how he built his beer company – and, incidentally, helped start a new industry in craft beer – serves candid, inspiring insights useful for entrepreneurs in any field. Koch’s practical optimism sets the standard for how business success and personal happiness can be beautifully connected.”

—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and best-selling author of Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End and MOVE: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead

“Jim Koch has opened a lot of doors for craft breweries like mine who have succeeded based on the premise of challenging the status quo. Every entrepreneur and aspiring entrepreneur will find useful and sage advice between the covers of Quench Your Own Thirst — and Jim’s personality, wisdom and sense of humor come through in his writing as crystal clear as a pint of Sam Adams Lager.”

—Sam Calagione, President & Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery

"Like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and the other greats, Jim Koch's entrepreneurial journey is motivated by a deep commitment to making superb products and building a unique culture that reinforces innovation and risk-taking. This book tells a compelling story about how he did it. The lessons will be invaluable for anyone starting a business or building a career."

—Bill Hambrecht, co-founder or Hambrecht & Quist and chairman of WR Hambrecht + Co

“This is an engaging and well-written blend of stories from a beloved company’s founding and sound guidance on surmounting common dilemmas faced in business and in life.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Anyone enjoying America's current Golden Age of Beer will be fascinated by Jim Koch's story of how it came to be. But this is really a book about the individual and team traits necessary to build any enterprise — and about the paradoxical combination of hard-headed practicality, impractical dreaming, long-term vision, and minute-by-minute adaptability required for success. Jim Koch once called Samuel Adams beer 'America's classic lager.' He has written a classic American story of pluck, ingenuity, setbacks, and achievement, all in a tone of gently self-mocking humor.”

—James Fallows, National Correspondent at The Atlantic

“For me, Sam Adams was not only the best beer I've ever tasted but also the best investment I ever made.”

—John Paulson, Founder of Paulson & Co.

"[Koch] writes about building and running a company in a fun and folksy tone. He is also refreshingly candid about the hard battles and missteps along the way. Unlike many turgid, self-told business books, Quench Your Own Thirst goes down easy."

—Reuters

Kirkus Reviews

2016-02-28
The founder and brewer of Samuel Adams shares the story of Boston Beer Company, his business philosophy, and entrepreneurial tips. Today, craft beer is all the rage, but that wasn't the case in 1984, when Koch decided to quit his successful job as a management consultant to start the Boston Beer Company, which would become famous for Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Inspired by upstart San Francisco-based brewery Anchor Brewing, Koch set out to brew a high-quality, premium beverage that was basically nonexistent in the beer market at the time. In doing so, he became a pioneer of the craft, home-brew, and small-batch movements. However, Koch's desire to start a brewery was not a whim. He is a fifth-generation brewer, and the Samuel Adams recipe has been in the family since the 1860s. Invoking "the spirit of a tavern conversation," Koch's chatty prose is fun and jocular as he recounts the old days when he sold Samuel Adams by hand while touring Boston's bars and restaurants, giving impromptu taste tests and letting the quality of the beer do most of the talking. Koch does more than tell old war stories (a bar manager once pulled a gun on him during a cold call). He also shares nuggets of common-sense business wisdom, such as investing in the product over marketing, pursuing organic growth over growth at all costs, and setting challenging but attainable goals. Koch's wisdom is summed up in his koan: "No one climbs a mountain to get to the middle." As the brewery landed more accounts and sales increased domestically and abroad, it experienced all the growing pains of a budding business as Koch's once-ragtag organization quickly morphed into a more streamlined and professional operation. Always true to himself, the author's belief in Samuel Adams and the people around him is what makes his story and philosophy so genuine and endearing. Koch's down-to-earth personality, business advice, and passion are good models for those interested in making their own ways.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169079777
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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