Brewdog - what can you learn from business punks?

James Watt and Martin Dickie are entrepreneurs, business punks and the founders of Brewdog. Brewdog is a pioneer of the craft beer revolution and one of the fastest-growing companies in the United Kingdom in the 2010s. Watt has written a book about Brewdog's rise and principles, Business for Punks, break all the rules - the Brewdog way (2015). The book is divided into seven parts, which are: A- The basics of entrepreneurship, B- Finance, C- Marketing, D- Sales, E- Leadership and F&G - Principles, rules of thumb, momentum and insights.A - THE BASICS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP “Don't start a business, start a revolution” Revolution, cause, mission. Watts stresses that you should have a passionate and big reason to found a company, and that it is not worth thinking of it merely as a company, but as a revolution:

• A revolution gives you yourself more energy for the work, because you are doing something you believe in fervently.
• A revolution also makes others want to jump on board with the company, either as customers or as employees. People want something to believe in and to invest themselves in.

If you don't like option A, create option B yourself The punks emphasise creating your own, new markets. The idea has become more widely known as the blue ocean strategy. In the sea metaphor, you should not go swimming in the crowded red ocean, but create an entirely new, blue ocean to swim in. Remember: Winning companies promote their category, losers promote themselves. B - FINANCE According to the author, the book's most important piece of advice is, somewhat surprisingly, completely contrary to the punk "smash everything and burn the land" mindset: You must know and master financial matters, and you must know your company's own bookkeeping inside out. You can be punk, but with poor bookkeeping a punk will not get very far. The book even presents a short glossary of finance, introducing terms such as assets, balance sheet, reconciliation, margin, gross profit and so on. Watts sums up the five basic financial skills as follows:

1. Prepare a cash flow forecast
2. Read your income statement and balance sheet
3. Calculate your production costs and margins.
4. Work out your expenses.
5. Work out your break-even point

Finance naturally involves product margins as well as pricing. In pricing, the book emphasises the term price tiering, which Finnish readers of business literature know especially from Parantainen's Tuotteistaminen books. It means packaging your offering into clear tiers or options, where you aim to sell a particular package, but the customer can also choose a more expensive one, which of course contains more of everything or otherwise distinctive content. C - MARKETING Brewdog is known for its brazen and bold stunts. A few examples: -A tank in front of the London Stock Exchange for a day to proclaim Brewdog and the message of craft beers. -An advertising campaign that took a very direct swipe at Vladimir Putin. -"The strongest beer of all time" would in itself have been worth a marketing shout, but Watt and company decided to package it in a dead squirrel: The core message of marketing, however, is not guerrilla marketing and stunts. Brewdog has sought to harness everything that can be harnessed for the benefit of marketing. For example, on its beer mats Brewdog did not put a traditional logo and slogan in large print, but a long and funny text that breathed Brewdog's attitude and revolution. Press releases, product descriptions, invoices, receipts: in all of these you can use your imagination and put your own message forward. In Finland, a company that has excelled at this is Varusteleka, which often came to mind from the book's message and examples. D - A VERY SHORT COURSE IN SALES

1. Do something damn well. A product or a service.
2. Be open and honest
3. Don't compete on price

E - A SHORT CHAPTER ON CRAFT-BREWERY-INFUSED TEAM SPIRIT AND LEADERSHIP As the title of Panu Luukka's book goes, Watts too stresses that company culture is king. Today's teams want to take part in essential decision-making, control their own work, be able to develop, and have challenges and rewards. When a good company culture can offer these, teams and employees deliver quality, which in turn generates margin and demand. F-G - PRINCIPLES AND MUSINGS -Even a shot in the dark is a shot. It is not sitting around idle. Preferably do something that can generate learning or growth. Don't overthink. -What you measure gets done, in other words, what a company focuses on, develops. The formula goes briefly like this. No measurements = No reports = No visibility = No interest = Death. -Act boldly on your own ideas. Whether advice is good or bad, it clouds your vision. Or creates confirmation bias. Watt underlines that an entrepreneur is expected to show immense amounts of courage and stubbornness. By default, even the advice in this book is, according to the author, just floaters in the vitreous.

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