Honesty and Motivation: Turning Pro Part 9
I usually started off my reply by saying, “Lots of money and lots of hard work.” It is still true that it takes a lot of hard work, but nowadays, some folks are opening nano-breweries for less than what most people would consider a lot of money. (It still takes about as much money as you can find. Of course, if you can get your hands on more money, the scope of the plan just grows to accommodate the funding.)
I’ve come to learn that there is one more ingredient to add to that mix—motivation. Perhaps motivation is the only critical ingredient. Like yeast, there is no beer made without motivation. You must have the passion and the drive to do the hard work, even when there is no pay and there seems like no end to the list of tasks. You’ve got to be determined to keep going, even when people tell you “no” or your best laid plans just fell apart in the blink of an eye. Through it all, you need to have a little voice in your head that says, “You will be successful.” You need a little voice tells you to keep going, because it will all be worth it. That voice needs to be there at all times, strong, unequivocal, even in the darkest hour. While you may have your external cheerleaders, it is this internal one that pulls you out of bed early each morning and keeps you working late through the night.
I have had quite a few people tell me about their brewery plans. It is really neat to hear about how they got started brewing, what they plan to achieve, and where they are in the process. I always tell them to let
me know about their progress. They all seem motivated and excited and I really enjoy hearing about their experience. However, there was one email I received that actually still bothers me to this day. The writer said that he was opening a brewery, but he was having trouble with motivation. He said that he faced an uphill battle with many people telling him why his venture would not work. He asked me to help motivate
him to keep working on opening a brewery. He wanted me to give him some words of encouragement that would carry him through those dark times.
I wrote up a nice reply, filled with lots of trite sayings about sticking with it and how all things worth doing were not always easy. Then I deleted it. The moment I read it back to myself I knew it was fake, dishonest. What was I doing? Why would I lie to this guy? So I wrote up a much more painful, but true, response. I told him flat out that if he wasn’t motivated by his own love of brewing, then he was going into the wrong business. He should search long and hard within himself for the answer, because relying on others to motivate you will certainly lead to failure. Much worse, it will send you on a course that is not true to yourself. I felt a little uneasy sending that to him, but I would have felt much worse if I just fed him
some line of garbage to make it easy on myself. I thought that a slap in the face would do a lot more to ignite a fire within him than holding his hand and telling him everything would be alright. I never heard back from him and I figure he might he even hate me for my brutal honesty, but maybe my response
did jumpstart his spirit and he finally found the motivation he needs.
