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Speakers:

Jeff York, Brad Werner, Longmont-based Dry Land Distillers, Nels Wroe

Jeff YorkÌý 0:14Ìý
Welcome to creative distillation where we distill entrepreneurship and research into actionable insights. I'm your host, Jeff York, Professor of Entrepreneurship and research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business at the ¾«Æ·SMÔÚÏßӰƬ. And with me today, as always, I have my co host.

Brad WernerÌý 0:35Ìý
Hello, Jeff. I'm Brad Warner. I'm the Faculty Director for entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business dDeming Center for Entrepreneurship. I should say, the titles are getting way too long here, but but it's good to see you and I am very excited about today because we have three samples of booze. Yes, but anyway, it's it's good to see you, Jeff, how you doing?

Jeff YorkÌý 0:56Ìý
I'm alright, Brad, you know, hanging in there, getting towards the end of the semester. I'm sorely disappointed that some teams I had competing in the new venture challenge, which is our wonderful cross campus entrepreneurship challenge at ¾«Æ·SMÔÚÏßӰƬ did not make it to the finals. And I'm very, very sad and disappointed and surprised because got some amazing teams. In my class. I've got people doing everything from robota sizing chemical experiments, 3d printing a substitute for human cells for preclinical trials of drugs, electrified space engine, we got amazing stuff going on training leadership through the use of horses, and revolutionising the way people learn math, which is totally appropriate guys on my thing. I know, you've got a ton of amazing ventures to write, right? Oh, yeah, I

Brad WernerÌý 1:52Ìý
mean, a ton more than I can list. But you know what, I think that this is a really good time to talk about investor fit. If we have entrepreneurs listening to the podcast, and not every entrepreneur, when they pitch is going to be pitching in front of the right investors, and they don't know it. And I just want to, I just really want to stress that if you have a pitch in front of investors, and it doesn't resonate, to keep on moving, because odds are if you've done all your work, and you've done your validation, and you have a sustainable competitive advantage, they just don't understand it. It's not a fit in their portfolio in their life and their vision, whatever it is, I just don't want you to give up.

Jeff YorkÌý 2:26Ìý
Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and the other thing that I think people have to realize is in these pitch competitions, it's an artificial construct, in many ways. But no matter what you do, the judges that are going to be there, whoever is judging is going to bring their own lens, and they're always going to think about from an investor lens to matter what you do, no matter what you tell them, no matter how many times you jump up and down and say, Look, I just want you to assess the quality of this work that the students have done and and the progress they've made the date and the quality of the presentation and not think about whether you would invest with it or not. Do they ever listen to that brand?

Brad WernerÌý 3:04Ìý
Never Never. I mean, if you have someone that's invested in hospitality their entire life and then get they get presented some sort of health care solution, they probably won't Yeah, they don't get it right, won't be able to understand it understand the market, the whole thing. So really, that's right, for those entrepreneurs. And I, because I know it's heartbreaking for entrepreneurs going through this process, I just really advise you to stick with it. Odds are especially if you're coming out of working with Jeff or myself, that it's the investors issue and not yours.

Jeff YorkÌý 3:31Ìý
Yeah. And you know, we always try to expand our students networks greatly. So and this is interesting. Like, just to get back to the the theme of the podcast, you know, the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, we're always trying to integrate research insights, classroom teaching, and real world education, which is why I love having this partnership with Brad, someone who's been a serial entrepreneur and investor his whole life. Someone like me, who's kind of this ivory tower nerd. So well said, Yeah, thank you. I thought I thought you'd like that comparison. Right? And then you got someone who's really good looking popular with all people charismatic. And then there's Brad. That's, that's really a good, good balance as well.

Brad WernerÌý 4:13Ìý
You know what, Jeff, you have a face for radio. That's all I'll

Jeff YorkÌý 4:18Ìý
be here all week, folks. But no, I was gonna say the research backs this up, like, you know, so this theory of entrepreneurship has really gained a lot of traction in recent years called effectuation. I created by Sarah saraswathy, at the Darden School at UVA, talks about this process of how expert entrepreneurs do not go out and say, Okay, if I can just get pick a name, I can get Ilan musk to take my call, then he'll see the value of this thing or whatever investor or stakeholder they think is really important. They got like, I get that person involved. And that never works. First of all, and really good entrepreneurs don't do that. Anyway, what they do is they just talk to anyone and everyone they can get an audience with figuring it's an opportunity to get my pitch and it's kind of like max amaizing the possible pool of likely hits just like a VCs portfolio, maximizing the number of opportunities to find the right person that puts skin in the game and connects with them. And that's that's what these entrepreneurs have

Brad WernerÌý 5:12Ìý
to do. Totally agree, totally agree. And the other thing is, I'm approached by people to invest in their businesses pretty much on a daily basis. And the one thing that that really sticks out to me is when they come up to me and they say, Brad, I only need 10 grand, right there. I'm like, they have no understanding of the business, they have no understanding of where they need to get to break even. And so to me, it's really a lack of credibility when you lead off with that statement.

Jeff YorkÌý 5:36Ìý
Fair enough. So So everybody out there ask Brad for at least half a million. When you go talk,

Brad WernerÌý 5:41Ìý
I'll still say no, but

Jeff YorkÌý 5:45Ìý
my way it is hard because we become so close to the students and we watch them work so hard, and they're not just students are actual entrepreneurs trying to launch real businesses. So you know, it becomes very difficult to see it when they don't succeed in some of these things, but they do persist and keep going. Okay, so so that's what's going on in my life this week. Anyway, or towards the end of this week, but on the podcast, we got cool things to talk about today. Yes, we do. So we are really thrilled to have Nels row with us today. knows is the founder of dryland distillers, which you can find at drylanddistillers.com, they're also located on Main Street and lovely Longmont, Colorado, which a faculty friend of mine just bought a house in. So I'll be sending them over there. And Nels is joining us to talk a little bit about the history and the offerings of dry land. Welcome Nels.

Nels WroeÌý 6:33Ìý
Well, hello. Hello, thanks. Thanks for having me today. It's our pleasure.

Brad WernerÌý 6:37Ìý
Yeah, no, it's it's great having you. So we'd love to hear kind of how you got into being a distiller and what what brought you kind of this point today?

Nels WroeÌý 6:45Ìý
Sure. Well, you know, I was just listening to kind of the background leading into this episode. And just to tie this back, first off, I 100% agree with everything you said about the entrepreneurship, because that's really what it's about for me. In fact, when I was an undergrad, I had a entrepreneurship professor at the University of Wyoming where I graduated, basically tell me that, hey, I should probably seriously consider taking the idea I had from my senior level entrepreneur course, and see if I can actually pull that off. And it was actually a pre coffee shop. Everything has blown up with coffee shops over the last 20 years, but it's free coffee shop. So sure enough, what did I do? I took the idea that I pitched in class. And my first gig out of college was opening my own coffee shop. Right? So I had zero money. I had an idea I had a pitch I had a business plan. So yes, indeed, I had to talk to about 40 people before I actually was able to pull it off and find somebody was actually willing to take a chance on more me than the idea. So don't give up. And that that introduction ties directly into dryland distillers for me, because while I did spend time in a more of a corporate career, I had a 20 year career working for a consulting firm or leadership development firm. During that period of time, though, I had nine different senior level roles. And in many of them being very, very diverse. So looking for those different experiences. Maybe Maybe it was to keep me interested, as my wife would say. But what I found is that lead me to dry lead distillers because I realized that I really genuinely missed the opportunity to control my own story, and do something that hadn't been done before. Right? Even though it seems like in the world of distilling ever whiskey is old, and you know, it's been around for a long time making spirits is, is just, it's been around, but honestly, what's different about dry land is we felt there was an opportunity to create something that was uniquely Colorado and uniquely local and we did not feel that had been done properly. And so I had the chance with a friend of mine who was a photographer in town in Longmont, also, to work for drinks only. There was a startup publication out of Montana called micro shiner. They needed somebody to do some interviews and profiles freelance, of these crazy startup distillers in Colorado now six or seven years ago, and I said, Come on Luke, this is an opportunity for at least for some free booze somewhere. So we spent a year touring different startups, some of the the, the originals in Colorado, met some wonderful people tasted some really, really fun spirits. And I realized I love this industry. I love the people I met. I love Colorado I've been had grown up in the West, and I was itching to do something different. And so dragon was created from our goal of taking something that is very traditional, making spirits making whiskey, and then figuring out how do we create something that is unique to Colorado and unique to the American West in a way that kind of fosters what we all believe in which is the local community, local investors. And just honoring the place we love. And that led to dry that because we we realized that we are living in a very, very difficult state to grow virtually anything in

Jeff YorkÌý 10:11Ìý
the gardener, I can attest to that.

Nels WroeÌý 10:13Ìý
There you go, right. And so when we looked at the grains, you know, that are typically used in spirits like our whiskey, we felt that the only one that really felt local enough was wheat, because we there's some history with wheat throughout the western US. And so we we decided to seek out the grains that would be most appropriate for Colorado, we did stumble across wood, which is now considered the oldest weed in North America that had never been distilled before. that grows in the Sonoran Desert. And that was the that was a seed of dry land, right? There was actually, you know, taking the time to find something that was locally appropriate. And then deciding, can we build not only a spirit out of this, but can we build a business off of that as well?

Brad WernerÌý 10:55Ìý
So how old is your business?

Nels WroeÌý 10:56Ìý
So we're four years into it? Four years of distilling in three years of actually being open. Great, great.

Brad WernerÌý 11:02Ìý
And this is your whiskey and you're actually your entire selection is available only at your distillery or can you find it anywhere else in Colorado,

Nels WroeÌý 11:10Ìý
you can find it select retailers throughout the Front Range, do mountain communities as well as starting this. Probably too small in September, it will be available in multiple states through through online direct consumer delivery as well.

Brad WernerÌý 11:22Ìý
Congrats, that's great. Well, speaking of whiskey, why don't we try some? I'm anxious for you to try some. Okay, before before we started recording today, we just tell the guys that I really have been smelling this all day. I even hit my wife who doesn't drink I had her smell and she was thinking maybe she tried bourbon.

Jeff YorkÌý 11:37Ìý
Hey, all right. I convert Yeah. Which one? Are we? Which one are we trying?

Brad WernerÌý 11:42Ìý
I went with the whiskey right away?

Jeff YorkÌý 11:44Ìý
You know me course you did. You know, of course.

Brad WernerÌý 11:48Ìý
I've had to put up with sour beers for a couple of recordings. This this is a great one.

Jeff YorkÌý 11:52Ìý
We had one recording with sour beer. Oh, that was bad. Oh, and I went to a new brewery bread I had a I had a great double double milkshake IPA, strawberry, lactose. Make some sour smoothie style.

Brad WernerÌý 12:06Ìý
Man,

Jeff YorkÌý 12:07Ìý
we're lineup holy cow that But back to this. This smells wonderful.

Brad WernerÌý 12:11Ìý
Really great, right? Holy cow.

Nels WroeÌý 12:13Ìý
So what do we smell and what you're you have there is our heirloom wheat whiskey. It is 100% single grain wheat whiskey made with the oldest wheat in North America. We're the only distiller in the country that we know of distilling this grain and you're tasting a whiskey that is unique because of that. we distill specifically to bring out as many characteristics of the grain itself in that listing.

Brad WernerÌý 12:36Ìý
Is this a whiskey that I would have found in a cowboy bark bar in the 1800s? It's possible

Nels WroeÌý 12:41Ìý
wheat whiskies American wheat whiskies are historically one of the first wheat whiskies fell out of favor. There's only a handful of distillers today distilling that kind of an original American whiskey style whiskey, corn, which is typically found in Bourbons, barley, those crops became a lot cheaper. And a lot you have a lot more yield typically than wheat does when you try to get the alcohol out of it.

Brad WernerÌý 13:05Ìý
Well, it tastes great. tastes great. What do you think, Jeff?

Jeff YorkÌý 13:07Ìý
It's great. I mean, it is different though it it's got a softness to it is how I would describe it. Almost bread like went away. I don't know if that's just psychological because it's the week, but super smooth. Yeah,

Nels WroeÌý 13:23Ìý
that is exactly what we're going for. We wanted the grain to come through. The ancient grain has a lot of silky notes, a lot of sweet notes. It's very gentle. Even if you taste our whiskey straight off is still an aged whiskey, the classic moonshine people's eyes on the like, I can I can actually drink this. You know, so I give all credit to the grain. It's a gorgeous grain. It's something that we are thrilled to have been able to turn into a spirit.

Brad WernerÌý 13:50Ìý
I'm a finish is fabulous as well, how many iterations of recipes did it take you to land on this?

Nels WroeÌý 13:56Ìý
So it took us seven full batch cycles, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a lot of grain, a lot of experimentation to go through some of the biggest challenges we had to because it's such an old grain, the enzyme structure and the protein structure in the grain is quite different than modern grains. We could not get modern yeasts that you would typically use in distilling or brewing to play well with it. Really? Yeah. So we ended up having to work with specialists at White labs.

Jeff YorkÌý 14:25Ìý
Yeah, right around the corner in Boulder. Got to get those guys on some. Yeah. Talk about yeast, and particularly sour beer yeast. Nice. How are you? I'm on nice. No, I'm sorry. No, I got the sour beer.

Nels WroeÌý 14:42Ìý
We ended up working with one of the specialists who I love the quote. She used basically said, I think you guys are chasing a pink unicorn if you're gonna want to get anything out of this. This green. I'm like, okay, a pink unicorn. Not just a unicorn. Yeah. But when she told us what we finally decided to do We decided to inoculate one of their commercial strains with raw grain from the field and do open fermentation. We basically created our own strain of yeast that we do harvest. And what that allowed it to do is a lot of to build on the commercial strain, which had a lot of the characteristics we liked, as well as the stability we liked. We brought in the natural yeasts from the environment that the grain grows in, and we were able to get our yields up. So it was a bit of a journey there. The enzyme structure is unique enough, we did a lab analysis of it got the lab analysis back comments to the side where you got a ton of enzymes in here. We have no idea what they're doing. Thanks for the heads up. All right, so we use only wheat and water when we mash this. So there's nothing else that we add, we activate every enzyme in that grain using temperature control. So it's it's a pretty pure whiskey and you're getting the true essence of the grain. And then how long do you agent that's the other lovely part about this was your tasting has been at just over a year. Really? That's it? Yep. What got barrels are you agent we use new American oak barrels light char char to basically and we do use a very good cooperage Calvin cooperage they're out of Louisville, and they use no petrochemicals when they are their barrels. Right. We found that the whiskey itself and the grain is easy to overwhelm with a barrel and we don't over agent and so there's an advantage not only do we get a really silky smooth whiskey out of a solid barrel, it's it happens fairly quickly.

Brad WernerÌý 16:30Ìý
Yeah, that's great.

Jeff YorkÌý 16:31Ìý
Yeah, I mean, I'm also getting like almost like a honey ish kind of finished. There was a sweetness to it, right? That a lot of Bourbons don't have a lot of whiskies don't have a really

Brad WernerÌý 16:41Ìý
nice man. Very happy to tell you and I have never said this on the podcast before but this one is going to go on my shelf for everyday. It's that good to me. I think it's it's fantastic. Nelson.

Nels WroeÌý 16:51Ìý
Thank you. You have never said that.

Brad WernerÌý 16:53Ìý
I haven't No, no. But yeah,

Nels WroeÌý 16:56Ìý
how much is the bottle so the bottle is 71 for full size. We also do have size bottles, and it's a brutally expensive grain. That's all I can say we Yeah, we successfully grew our first commercial crop in Colorado or grower just east of the distillery. Oh, wow. This last summer. So we are hoping to get that grain price down a bit. We even had to source the seed green for him. He planted a dryland crop in the driest year in 99 years he's had in Colorado as a fourth generation farmer. And what was interesting is even though he panicked, thinking we were gonna get virtually nothing. This brain did better than virtually any of the other modern grains with no water. Really? That's interesting. Yep.

Brad WernerÌý 17:40Ìý
Joel, did you have a chance to taste us when you were over at the distillery? You're at you're muted.

Jeff YorkÌý 17:45Ìý
By the way for noses as a beer called you're muted, Chuck. I think it's just shot the other day. It's really good, good hazy IPA. Just Just to drop that I was the first pandemic theme beer name I've seen i thought was now let Joel talk sorry.

Joel DavisÌý 18:03Ìý
I did try the whiskey when I went out to dry land to pick this up for you guys and really is delicious. and still they have out there is very impressive. It's quite an operation and a very small space.

Jeff YorkÌý 18:15Ìý
Very small. Yeah. It's a is delicious. Just wonderful. Should we should we try the gym next?

Nels WroeÌý 18:22Ìý
Yeah. So the you're basically building on a theme of dryland which is let's let's honor Colorado and the American West. And the way the best way possible, we decided to throw one more challenge down our gin, which is what I recommend we try next. As far as we know, what's the first true 100% native Colorado gin, every everything in it is native to the state. That limitation was an extreme limitation because there was not that you can work with in Colorado that is an authentic virgin. This one took us 27 matches. And we finally got it right when we decided when we left Colorado, Colorado, we were trying to create a gym that was more of a traditional gym, you'd expect. And when you're missing things like citrus, for example, Colorado has no native citrus, you got a big hole in your botanical profile. So we just let the technical filing tell us where they were going to go. So we use native native Juniper, which is one of the three native universe to the state. It's a single seed Juniper, the only one in the state. It's super gentle. And so we've basically created a gn which is super sippable very gentle, even though it's loaded with Juniper 99% of the botanical basket we use is Juniper. It's not overly Juniper heavy. And what we always get, we get the reaction a lot. People say oh, I'm not a gin drinker. I'm not a gin fan. They just try it. And they're like, wow, I think I could actually like this gin because it is quite different.

Brad WernerÌý 19:49Ìý
I was just thinking the same thing. You know, I'm just kind of curious though, about the overall strategy. When you go into the distilling business, which was the first thing that you made, was it the whiskey

Nels WroeÌý 19:58Ìý
so the first thing I made there Two of them we ran it made in parallel, the heirloom whiskey that we wanted to really get that recipe dialed in. And then the one you're going to try next is the the cactus Spirit because we wanted to make an original true domestic mezcal. But we did not want to use any adjuncts or any pre processed ingredients and our spirits. So that meant we had to source raw gobby. And raw Gowdy was virtually impossible to source then. And it still is now it's even harder to get now. We worked with our now retired professor at CSU, he ran the Grand Junction Research Station, and until about three years ago, and he helped us kind of understand what single varietal of a gobby might grow in Colorado and southern Colorado, but we couldn't find it, it was either a situation where we'd have to plan it, and how hard was it seven years later, or we have to go for edge and tear up land. And that was not part of our plan. Right? So a friend of mine from Sonora, who had taught us the process of making this gal when I was talking with my dog, I said, you probably know button, or I'm sorry, rabbit mountain just out of Boulder. Yeah, so well, when you take a young pup out there and they tripped around a little too far they get cactus thorns in their path, sitting there pulling cactus thorns out of our pads, and I'm like, there's a lot of prickly pear around here. And I wonder if you could use this in three play as a garden. So that was one of the the other key recipes we developed, as we said, let's just see if we can take the prickly pear cactus, which is pseudo related to yuck as a succulent, and see if we can get something out of it. And sure enough, so we develop the process of the recipe for the heirloom wheat, and the the cactus spirit, more or less at the same time to really, really try to bring a true Colorado spirit into the glass. And so that took us some trial and error, although, surprisingly, the cactus took us was faster to get to the recipe itself. Harder to figure out how do we process the cactus?

Jeff YorkÌý 22:06Ìý
I mean, that's gotta be like a, an awful process. I mean, what do you do? I mean, how does it work? Like this gotta be incredibly labor intensive,

Nels WroeÌý 22:15Ìý
painful, painful. Literally. I My hands are scarred my psyche is scarred. Wow,

Jeff YorkÌý 22:22Ìý
you really are suffering for your craft?

Nels WroeÌý 22:24Ìý
Yeah, we did first just find friends who had property just outside of Lyons. And they said, Yeah, we got lots of prickly pear, come on, out. So we did that at first, and we had to learn how to use double welding gloves to harvest it. We ended up bringing up a blender, we burned up a food processor, trying to figure out how to get access to stuff. You know, we finally ended up on a wood chipper. Yes, we actually end up with a wood chipper to process this cactus we and we we smoke it over mesquite for 24 to 48 hours just like you would a gabbay. And that basically softens up the cactus and gets a little bit of conversion. Actually, there's some starches available to convert and then we would chip right in at the time my kids call that stage of the process dogs not. Yeah, okay, gooey and green and messy and it'll bite you if you and then from there, we redeveloped the recipe on how do we get the diversions we do a mash and and we then ferment on it. So those are the flagships and they were all about can we genuinely and authentically. Take something truly of Colorado and from Colorado and get into the bottle.

Jeff YorkÌý 23:42Ìý
So Brian, you're not a you're not a gym guy. What do you think of this?

Brad WernerÌý 23:46Ìý
I actually like the jet I thought it was pretty good. I was. So now so would this be a good gin and tonic gin? Or is this more of a sipping gin?

Nels WroeÌý 23:54Ìý
Well, it's it makes a phenomenal gin and tonic, you have to be a little bit careful. You can overwhelm it with the wrong tonic. So you're gonna want to look for a tonic that is not overly sweet and not too much pluck a brand for us. fevertree is not bad. just yet. I would say just use it. Use it carefully. We do make her own tonic at the tasting room. Oh, really? That's cool. Very cool. We do have a recipe for topics that we can share with folks who are interested.

Jeff YorkÌý 24:20Ìý
Nice. Really, really

Brad WernerÌý 24:21Ìý
cool. I love it. I actually I think we kind of went through the entrepreneurial journey right Jeff right here with Nelson dryland?

Jeff YorkÌý 24:29Ìý
Absolutely especially the part where he was suffering so horribly.

Brad WernerÌý 24:34Ìý
I love it that they put cactus into tree chippers or tree tree grinders or whatever the hell those things are called.

Jeff YorkÌý 24:39Ìý
Yeah, well, we haven't tasted the cactus. Right. You haven't tried it yet? I'm going right now. All right, let me let me drink this to Joe. This is gonna be an interesting second half of the podcast.

Brad WernerÌý 24:49Ìý
Joe Joe's a tequila guy though. I'd like to hear from Joe on this one. That's true.

Joel DavisÌý 24:54Ìý
Well, I'm not a gin guy. But I did enjoy the jam a lot. I'm starting to come around to that but We have a gym that I tried at spirit house and we have them on a few months ago and now Nels Jan, I'm thinking, maybe we'll work some gin and tonics into the rotation once things start to heat up in the next couple of months.

Brad WernerÌý 25:13Ìý
Did you try Cactus Joe?

Joel DavisÌý 25:15Ìý
Oh, I did try the cactus. And I like, I love it. I love the flavor of it. But I also just love the story behind it, that Nels at a real commitment to this vision to make it truly Colorado and found a way to do it. So it's got that local element, the DIY elements, the artist of the artistic crafts, artists an element to it. There's a check all my boxes.

Jeff YorkÌý 25:46Ìý
Yep. Yeah, that dimension crane, the restrain. I mean, there's all kinds of innovation going on here to do things with materials that, you know, there's a reason those aren't the materials they're usually use is not because they don't work well as evidence is in front of us. There's all delicious beverages, because they're hard to find the most easy thing. But you've really imbibed the spirit of Colorado, in my opinion of like, Hey, you know what? We're going to take what we got and make it absolutely awesome, which is kind of I think Coloradans do that to a large extent. Yep. Really?

Brad WernerÌý 26:18Ìý
So do you have to have another another drink in the pipeline?

Nels WroeÌý 26:22Ìý
So we don't have another spirit in the pipeline, per se. We are. Honestly we're trying to, we're trying to open the second distillery at the point of there was a time when we're like, okay, maybe we should focus. We actually have so much demand right now particularly for the whiskies in the cactus that we are just trying to ramp up and make sure we have enough to we just we sell out. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, the cactus chefs restaurants absolutely love it, because it's, it's a phenomenally food friendly spirit. Believe it or not, it's pears with citrus and spice. But I think there is another spirit that we're going to be exploring probably this fall, we're actually looking at a couple of them that are there specific cores, mainly to help us kind of really showcase more and more about the creativity of our bar team. We've got just a killer more team. They've been with us since the very beginning. We do everything in the tasting room from you know we fresh juices. Everything we use is made their on site or bitters tour. Our tinctures even replicate a vermouth replica from our spirits, for example. So everything we do is made on site. So though, we're probably going to go towards even packaging and releasing our vermouth because it's been so popular to have a non wind based remove that we've been getting a lot of pressure to release that.

Brad WernerÌý 27:47Ìý
Really cool. I would recommend anybody that's listening here. If you're into whiskey gin, or prickly pear cactus, I don't I don't know. It's not it's not a tequila is it? It's a unique spirit. It's just it's kind of it's on its own. It's tequila.

Jeff YorkÌý 28:01Ìý
It's It's It's much, much more approachable. It definitely has a smoky kind of flavors. A lot of the mezcal kind of tequila has have been very, very easy drinking. I'm not a big tequila person myself, at least not since college. And this is really nice. I like it a lot. rhymes if you're straining to Margarita, like blood orange Margarita. It's fun. Yeah, I'm gonna set my wife's a big Margarita fan, so I'm gonna set that side make sure I give it to her. It's delicious, though. So you got heirloom wheat whiskey, native Colorado gin and prickly pear cactus spirits look for them. So you said they're available in Colorado locally?

Nels WroeÌý 28:41Ìý
They are we have a select group of retailers and restaurants. Easiest way to keep up to date is drylin distillers comm we have where to find this link. You can always find us at places like Hazel's in Boulder, sure, wine merchants, those are two of the key ones in Boulder. Why it's in Longmont and several places in immediate areas as well, both North and South.

Jeff YorkÌý 29:04Ìý
And if you're listening to this from far away, then that's good motivation to come visit us here in lovely Boulder, Colorado. And if you are an entrepreneur or a scholar of entrepreneurship, we would be happy to host you here on Creative distillation and at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. If you come and give a research talk talk to some of our students Nels could we can we persuade you to come by our classrooms on time and, and discuss this? I think it's just an awesome story. And your story is really a great illustration of entrepreneurial persistence. And, and I gotta be honest with you, our undergraduate students will probably perk up a little when you're talking about distillery versus an app. Yeah, maybe pretty interesting. This.

Nels WroeÌý 29:46Ìý
sure I'd be happy to we tie into the very beginning as well. I think I'm on my 136 conversation about investors right now.

Jeff YorkÌý 29:59Ìý
He knows it's 136 130/5 All right.

Nels WroeÌý 30:03Ìý
So point being is it just, you can't give up? And yeah, what I find amazing is that when it resonates, it resonates big time. Yeah, that's right. It's that connection, right? It's that connection. And you just gotta you just got to hit it right? And you just cannot give up. Resilience is key here.

Jeff YorkÌý 30:20Ìý
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And you can never predict it either. I mean, it's the thing is like, I'm always I've totally frustrated my students this semester, I gave them an exercise. end of the semester, I said, Go talk to 20 people you think could be helpful in starting your venture? And like, we have to actually talk to them. I'm like, Yes, you actually have to talk to them. Email doesn't count. posting on Snapchat does not count. You have to go speak to them. Because you don't know what's going to come out of those conversations. You never have any idea. And that's that's not just something we're experience. That's that's the research shows this, the more entrepreneurs have lots of conversation with lots of potential stakeholders, the more likely they are to find people that put skin in the game. And,

Brad WernerÌý 30:59Ìý
Jeff, I require my students to talk to 100 people 100 100 period

Jeff YorkÌý 31:04Ìý
100 100. So you heard it here, if my students aren't listening, but if they did,

Brad WernerÌý 31:11Ìý
your class, it's Brad's

Jeff YorkÌý 31:12Ìý
fault. It's all Brad's fault. But next year, it's 100. People,

Brad WernerÌý 31:16Ìý
because you're right, though, you have to talk to people, you have to talk to people, and when they're 20, to kind of get a sense, but by the time you're at 100, they have a really good sense of which direction they need to go.

Jeff YorkÌý 31:26Ìý
Why didn't mention is 20 in one week? Oh, no, no, I'm

Brad WernerÌý 31:28Ìý
talking about I give him about six weeks.

Jeff YorkÌý 31:31Ìý
Yeah, no, this is like a one week challenge. Okay, I've talked to 20 people. So But yeah, I like the idea of, but then actually, I do have their final if they. So my students, if they win their final pitch competition, they don't have to write the final report. They just automatically get an A on the final report, and they're done. And they can go ski or whatever. But if they have to write the PowerPoint, they've got 50 Bob up to 100 based on what you said, like, I truly believe in that so much. But who knows, it is been an absolute pleasure talking to you, I can't wait for your new location up. And that's gonna be right on the main street in Longmont. There

Nels WroeÌý 32:03Ìý
it is. 519 Main Street is where we'll be. And we're at the three weeks, three months out from actually being able to have guests in officially. But right now it's open doors are always open, you can come in and check it out, see what we're doing and our current location by the way, our current distillery, which I encourage you to visit as well as only a half a block south of So come on in, you get to walk into the back alley entrance to the distillery and we can actually give you a tour of the space love it sounds awesome.

Jeff YorkÌý 32:33Ìý
Well, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on on creating something really, really unique and innovative and delicious. Really, really have enjoyed it. And I guess if I had to take one word to sum up these, these beverages, I would say these are very smooth, smooth spirits, if every one of them was just clean, smooth went down. So easy, delicious, very nice, very nice. And

Brad WernerÌý 32:59Ìý
the whiskey is fantastic.

Jeff YorkÌý 33:00Ìý
You should see Brad's whiskey shelf, if he's going to buy it but no shelf. That's pretty impressive.

Brad WernerÌý 33:05Ìý
It's it's there. If

Jeff YorkÌý 33:06Ìý
it's if you're there with some heavy hitters up on that shelf.

Brad WernerÌý 33:11Ìý
There's a new player in town. We're gunning for you. Thanks, gentlemen. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

Jeff YorkÌý 33:22Ìý
And really, our pleasure is great talk to you. We'll look forward to seeing you soon. And

Brad WernerÌý 33:25Ìý
we'll meet you in person. Sounds great. Thanks. Yep. Bye. Bye.

Jeff YorkÌý 33:33Ìý
So, uh, so cool. You know, the Deming center, we're always trying to make connection with local entrepreneurs. And it's always cool when on the podcast, we can actually do that. And I really do think he'd be great in the classroom. I think it'd be an awesome guest speaker and they wouldn't even talk him into mentoring the students because I know they would love to hear from someone who actually makes makes whiskey.

Brad WernerÌý 33:53Ìý
Yeah, now it's a cool story to write. The guy came out of industry did a little bit of consulting. It seems to me that he did market research for another firm and use it for his own business. Yeah, right. There you go. Anyway, I liked him. And like I really am serious, though, that I think the whiskey is great.

Jeff YorkÌý 34:11Ìý
Well, I do too. I'm getting ready to pour the rest of it into my seat. I see what you're drinking on the zoom here, Brad? Yeah, I mean, we're whiskey. And more than more than anything. I mean, I'm more of a beer fan. But for my drink spirits, I'm definitely gonna drink whiskey and this one is excellent. I would buy songs well. Alright, so for the first time in a while, we're talking about paper without a guest read. This is a this is kind of like old school creative distillation.

Brad WernerÌý 34:39Ìý
That can be really honest.

Jeff YorkÌý 34:44Ìý
Yeah, as opposed to your normal take with the author's here where you're so polite and say, What the hell did you come up with this title or like things like hired, you know, these people that spent like, you know, 15 years writing these papers? Um, you know, it's a shame because As I was thinking, it's not really a shame, but I was thinking we should get these authors on and maybe we will. So the paper I want to talk about today, it's in press and organization science. Organization science is a really interesting journal tends to publish more things that come from a sociological perspective, as well is a big part of what organization science looks for is papers that are somewhat counterintuitive, a little more beyond the pale, a little further afield than some of the other journals. I'm a member of the editorial boards, full disclosure, I think it's a fantastic journal. I've only had one paper ever accepted there. So there's not like a give me any favoritism because they've rejected a lot more amazing, very, very nr field, high status, well received journal, and I was just looking around for papers to talk about and I found this this is up on press. It's by Todd shuffling these folks, Jeff, these, these Who are these folks, but touch definitely as assistant professor in strategic management at the fox School of Business at Temple. He did his PhD in sociology at the University of Michigan. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Urban Institute. The Urban Institute is a really great organization at University of Michigan. And what they do is they do research into sustainability and business and they've got some world leading scholars there. They really do a nice job of integrating consideration of particularly environmental sustainability, and world class research. A lot of great scholars have been herb Institute, postdoctoral fellows, and then his co author is definitely Dimitri is an assistant professor of strategy and organization. And I always mispronounce this, the saltus faculty of the saltist spec. See, I knew I couldn't do it. She's at McGill University, I can never pronounce their their business school, I knew I was gonna screw up, especially after all this whiskey. She did her postdoctoral fellow outside that Oxford and did her PhD, also in sociology at Northwestern University. And I think these folks background kind of comes through nicely in this study, because, and the study is called, I love that. Okay, so So, Brad, come on, let's see what you think here. Come on.

Brad WernerÌý 37:04Ìý
I've read it. So I know what's coming.

Jeff YorkÌý 37:06Ìý
It's not that bad. All right. The new food truck in town.

Brad WernerÌý 37:10Ìý
That that's okay. Right. Oh, you got to stop there.

Jeff YorkÌý 37:13Ìý
Okay. Yeah, but this is so bad. Geographic communities and authenticity based entrepreneurship.

Brad WernerÌý 37:20Ìý
Okay. So first of all, when I when I read the first sentence of the abstract, authenticity is a value attribution for organizations. No. Well, yeah. Okay. So, I mean, the bottom line is the rest of the sentence like you

Jeff YorkÌý 37:35Ìý
just read the first half.

Brad WernerÌý 37:36Ìý
I did, because that's, that's I'm gonna read this paper.

Jeff YorkÌý 37:38Ìý
Oh, come on. Now.

Brad WernerÌý 37:42Ìý
I'm gonna have you explained it to me. And then I'll tell you

Jeff YorkÌý 37:44Ìý
what the point of the podcast is that you're not supposed to read the paper.

Brad WernerÌý 37:48Ìý
It's I'm saying, so I read the first sentence. I'm staying true to our charter.

Jeff YorkÌý 37:53Ìý
You're totally breaking our charter. Like, if we go back to old school, creative distillation where we're hanging out in person. You ever read any of the papers I have

Brad WernerÌý 38:02Ìý
in the title? I always read the abstracts.

Jeff YorkÌý 38:04Ìý
Oh, did you? Okay, okay. Well, go ahead. I mean, okay, the rest of the sentence, but one that raises a challenge of audience acceptance for innovative entrepreneurs. Let

Brad WernerÌý 38:13Ìý
me stop you there.

Jeff YorkÌý 38:13Ìý
Now. Do you think that's true? I mean, just, I mean, just that one sentence.

Brad WernerÌý 38:17Ìý
I so so I think it's totally true, but I think it's, I think it's totally apparent.

Jeff YorkÌý 38:21Ìý
My okay. Okay, that's, that's great. That's great. What you are trying to do in the first sentence of a paper, is to write something that is clearly true. Okay. This is an academic strategy. So if we have any young PhD students, or if it hasn't written a ton of papers, or people that are trying to get tenure or whatever, they're writing a lot of papers, the first sensible paper should be unequivocally true. Okay? Because what you're This is just like a pitch, right? Yeah. Come into a pitch. Cancer is a growing problem in the United States. Okay, right. No, no, no, wait, no, no, it's not. It's not a problem, right? Like, you ever see a pinch start with like, something like, toenail fungus is the biggest medical issue we face in this country. You're like, Okay, I'm done. Thank you very much. Or sometimes my whiteboard marker runs out of ink. And I don't know what to do. Like, you know, these are obviously not big problems. For people. It's just like an entrepreneurial pitch. You're trying to make sure that the first sentence is true. And I think, you know, you think that Okay, okay, maybe

Brad WernerÌý 39:23Ìý
never stop either, though, cuz I have a question. Go ahead, please. Yeah, my question is, do you think that large organizations, by definition can be authentic?

Jeff YorkÌý 39:33Ìý
I do. I do think they can.

Brad WernerÌý 39:35Ìý
I'm still on the fence. I'm not sure I actually see this. This kind of the way that a company progresses, is founded by a small group of people starts to get traction. They're running everything through their values framework. There's authenticity there. But I think that authenticity gets lost somewhere in that growth phase.

Jeff YorkÌý 39:55Ìý
Well, so here's the thing this is this is actually getting to the insight. This is kind of pretty Well known to most entrepreneurship scholars that study authenticity. And I'll just talk him back. If you're just joining us, gosh, Joel helped me out how many podcasts episodes? Would they go back to get to our Izabel? podcast? I believe that's Episode 14. And this is 17. Okay, so there we go. Thank you. Joe is not sampling so he can, he can remember these things. And he's just smarter than me too. So the, we were talking with Isabel, about individual's perception of their own authenticity, and how that's a challenge for entrepreneurs. But when we talk about authenticity, for a company, I mean, that's in the eyes of the perceivers. Right? It's an audience, like so whether or not you can say a large company is authentic or not really depends on authentic to whom. And I think I think it is easier for companies to project an image of authenticity, when they're very tightly aligned to their customers value proposition or their customers values, I should say, beyond what their product offers. So an example I would give is Patagonia. Patagonia, of course, makes good clothing. But I think despite the fact that they, by some people's assessments don't do as much around environmental stability as say, The North Face are still perceived as much more authentic, because they were that values of environmental stewardship on their sleeve. And they put out things like the Wall Street Journal that don't buy this jacket. Right. Right.

Brad WernerÌý 41:31Ìý
But so I think that that's the easy one to pick. I think that people people lean on the most. So give me a Give me an example outside of the clothing industry,

Jeff YorkÌý 41:41Ìý
outside of the clothing industry. That's a good question. Tesla.

Brad WernerÌý 41:46Ìý
Yeah, maybe? I don't know. I actually don't know. I mean, I think it's certainly I would say the Tesla is authentic to Elan musk and what he's trying to do so yeah,

Jeff YorkÌý 41:53Ìý
I would give you Tesla, Ben and Jerry's, even though they're owned by Unilever and right,

Brad WernerÌý 41:58Ìý
but but but the point is, I think it's a small group.

Jeff YorkÌý 42:01Ìý
I do. I think it's to your point, I don't disagree with you. I think it's hard, right? I think it's difficult to maintain that perception of authenticity as you grow. And here's the thing, here's the here's the tension in this paper, I want to see if you think this is this is real. What they're saying in this paper is that there's two types of authenticity. One is an authentic, what they call type authenticity, which just think about that as conformity. Being an easily understood business that someone can look at and just say, Yeah, I get that, okay, you're allowed in the in the case that you're a steakhouse. It's a steak house, they had a steak, they have butter on top of the steak. They've got really expensive cocktails, they probably have an iceberg salad with a bunch of blue cheese on it. You know, it's a steakhouse that's easy to understand if I go to Steak House, if I go to steak house, and then there is what they are calling craft authenticity. I think this absolutely relates back to what we were just talking about with nails. And craft authenticity is defined in the paper. I'm going to read from the paper, skilled hands on techniques, sophisticated ingredients, small scale artistry, rather than mess, industrial manufacturing. These producers gain license to be highly innovative, and transcend tight boundaries. Yep. Sweet.

Brad WernerÌý 43:15Ìý
So I agree. 100%. First of all, I agree that Nels is that person that you just described? But does that change now said that they're selling out of everything, right that they have to expand? Is there a point where you reach you know, course 40 years ago was cores that and then they scaled? The whole thing was about going over the Rocky Mountains to get the cores? Right, right. I mean, we'd have people visiting from Colorado and Chicago, and they'd have a truckload of course, because you couldn't bite in Chicago.

Jeff YorkÌý 43:42Ìý
I got another one then four years Chicago, Vienna beef.

Brad WernerÌý 43:45Ìý
Ooh, got a beef I liked. I liked them very much.

Jeff YorkÌý 43:49Ìý
It's very authentic. It's true Chicago, man. I mean, there's no substitute for VOB.

Brad WernerÌý 43:55Ìý
And they've scaled

Jeff YorkÌý 43:56Ìý
and they have scaled. They're I mean, they're we you and I go get a Chicago style hot dog. right downtown. They have beef.

Brad WernerÌý 44:01Ìý
Yeah. That's a good point.

Jeff YorkÌý 44:03Ìý
And music is another kind of category. I think musicians and bands are entrepreneurs. I totally agree. I like authenticity to a musical. But see, so their point is like, there's two forms of authenticity you can have as an entrepreneur, you can be an easily understood business that fits an archetype. And people are like, Oh, yeah, that's, that's the thing I need. Therefore, I will go there. Think Outback Steakhouse, right? It's like, you know, it's another steak house. It's got a little bit of a spin on it. I'm just using steak houses because that's what they have in the paper. Yeah, well, we'll get to how you're hungry. When you hear about Outback Steakhouse.

Brad WernerÌý 44:40Ìý
No, no, but the first Steakhouse.

Jeff YorkÌý 44:44Ìý
Anyway, our sponsors for this week, I just wanted to mention jadis joy rides our producer Joel Davis's bicycle tour of the murals of Boulder, Colorado. And you might say to yourself, hey, I want to I care about the murals of Boulder, Colorado. Well, you haven't seen the murals. They're amazing and it's a really cool way to go see the entire town if you haven't checked this out, JDs joy rides. J as in Joel D is in Davis s joy. rides.com is our official sponsor, and I'm sorry, I forgot to name drop you at the beginning of the

Brad WernerÌý 45:18Ìý
show, by the way, even going and seeing the murals with Joel will be a blast, but just hanging out with Joel I think for the aftermath.

Jeff YorkÌý 45:22Ìý
So yeah, he's got to see the murals, but riding around electric bikes and seeing the murals. Oh, yeah. You're gonna get a beer to me. You can't beat that. Yep. All right. That was our Quick, quick sponsor message. I'm getting better at maybe one day we'll have like another sponsor besides JD is dry rice. But anyway, okay. So back to the paper. So what they're doing, they're sitting is there's two forms authenticity. And if you're gonna go after this craft authenticity, it's gonna matter where you locate geographically. And that's what I really like about this paper for the podcast is it's got a real message in because we see, I mean, gosh, bread, how many craft craft entrepreneurs, would you say you got going in your classroom? A lot? A lot? Yeah, it's a growing movement. It's a growing area of study in academia, too. And there's a reason for that. I think, I think we're seeing a cultural shift, where millennials, as well as Jen's ears, are looking for things that are authentic, because they've grown up in a largely artificial world where they're just dialed in. I mean, God knows the pandemic has made that even worse for people, certainly,

Brad WernerÌý 46:23Ìý
let me go a step farther, aren't authentic in your business. And as you grow your business, you're not going to survive. I think authenticity is necessary. And so I wrote down these two terms, because the first one you mentioned was conformity. Yeah, I don't think conformity is authenticity authentic. I think 40 means that you're fitting into something that maybe you're uncomfortable with, and craft authenticity. I'd never heard that term until today, I think is awesome.

Jeff YorkÌý 46:47Ìý
Yeah. And so there, there are kind of creating that term. So first of all, that's the first thing that I think is interesting, like, just the concept of craft authenticity, as I think about myself as entrepreneur. Well, okay, the idea is that there's a trade off, right? The further you know, this is true, Brad, I think you I mean, maybe you won't, but I'm pretty sure knowing you you will. The more innovative you get as an entrepreneur, the more you challenge the status quo, for example, Nels creating whiskey out of wheat instead of corn or barley or something else. The further afield you get from that the more traditional audiences, the people that are looking for whiskies are going to be more skeptical about your product claims, right? Yes, I'm like a, you know, I only care about like, scotch whiskies from the northern Highlands, or I only drink bourbon from Kentucky, Baba, but whatever, I'm having a think about trying this wheat whiskies I mean, like, Yeah, but

Brad WernerÌý 47:43Ìý
they're not your customers, you're not even your target customers. Right, right. And that's just the point of the paper, you're not only the innovators and the early adopters,

Jeff YorkÌý 47:50Ìý
you're nailing it. So if you're gonna go start your wheat whiskey distillery, you want to be and this is I'm just gonna cut to the chase, because we've already talked to males for a while. And I just want to distill this down real quick and see what you think about this. And the point of the paper distill down simply for you entrepreneurs out there is if you are relying on craft authenticity, and as I define that, that's notions of hands on techniques, sophisticated ingredients, I didn't define it that way. Todd, and Daphne didn't their paper, you know, you know what craft is, when you see it, you are going to want to be in a community, like for your startup time you want to go in a community that number one has a high level of education. Now, is it because there's gonna be smarter people there? No, it's because there's this classification that sociologists use for people that seek out extreme ends of experiences, they seek out, you know, they'll go to like a local food court, when they're traveling abroad and eat like, you know, the street food, there's nothing fancy about at the same time, they'll pay exorbitant amounts for a unique experience. And those types of people tend to be highly educated. They call them cultural, omnivores, people who will sample a wide array of experiences and don't differentiate and evaluate them all. The same is like, hey, that's a great experience. We kind of fit the cultural omnivore. I'm not trying to say we're cool or anything, certainly went listen to podcasts knows that's not the case. But cultural omnivores are people that seek a wide array of experience, and those tend to be highly educated people. So you want to be a place with higher education, the way they measure that the paper is the density of universities, and the numbers of bachelor's degree in a city. So we live there is what you're taught boulder is one of those places, or is a cultural omnivore. And Gee, what do you know, how many crafts companies have we talked about now? I think that's all we talk about, right?

Brad WernerÌý 49:36Ìý
Well, and you can walk down a street and you see mom and pop custom shoes now. And I mean, everything you give leather makers, and even shaves and haircuts, which I wouldn't know much about, but you know, all these types of things. They're popping up all over the place. But here's my question before you finish, because you're talking about that when you're talking about this craft, which I think is I really embrace that. I mean that that resonates with me as a person, but can they scale? Or is there? Is there this tipping point where they can only scale so far? And it turns into more than conformity?

Jeff YorkÌý 50:08Ìý
It's a great question. And it's not the question this paper addresses. So I can't say from the research that

Brad WernerÌý 50:13Ìý
what's what's your gut tell you?

Jeff YorkÌý 50:14Ìý
I think they can. I think it's tricky. I think it's a tight rope and example, I would think about locally as New Belgium Brewing Company, which is scaled, and since been acquired. And the view of like craft beer enthusiasts would say, has lost its authenticity. Others would say, Hey, you know what, they're still brewing the same beers. They're still experiment, they're still doing other things. So who can say again, it's in the eyes of the audience, you know what we should do? I know some professors at CSU that state exactly as they wrote a paper called selling out or selling in. And we should just get them on here to talk about this. So so let's table that question, because I can't answer it. And

Brad WernerÌý 50:48Ìý
the question that's been resonating with me for a long time, not just today, so I'd love to hear it have them.

Jeff YorkÌý 50:53Ìý
Yeah, well, let's get them in here. And we'll see what they say. Personally, my answer is, I think it can be done. I don't think it can be done in the same way that Well, okay, here's the thing, because I'm defining this as subjectively in the eyes of the audience. What do you think of when you think of Burt's Bees?

Brad WernerÌý 51:10Ìý
I don't know much about Burt's Bees. I've tried their chapstick a couple times. July get. I've used it once. So it did nothing for me, right. Okay. neutral. I'm agnostic on Burt's Bees.

Jeff YorkÌý 51:21Ìý
You didn't think of Clorox? No quiet zones, Burt's Bees. So, you know, they don't appear to be inauthentic. But now that you know that maybe you would

Brad WernerÌý 51:32Ìý
know Justin's peanut butter, right? They were acquired by

Jeff YorkÌý 51:34Ìý
Hormel. Right? Yeah. So I don't know. What do you know? So anyway? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I think I think it can be done. I think I don't think most people by Justin's

Brad WernerÌý 51:44Ìý
You know what, though, when we have those guys on, I'd like to have one of my friends on. It's an expert marketer as well. Eric Bruno, I'd love to hear it run on and challenge them on is that is it a persona that they're creating? Or is it this craftiness, this artisanship that it's grown out of, and I'd really love to be able to distinguish the two, because I have a feeling that when they get big, it is Clorox can own Burt's Bees, but we're going to market it the way that they did when they were first.

Jeff YorkÌý 52:10Ìý
There's there's no doubt there's no doubt that that's absolutely done. So I won't need Bruno to tell us. Okay, the and Tom and Yolanda will tell us the same thing. But I thought that idea. Let's do that. Okay. So okay, let me go through this paper real quick. So high education, educate, commute. Here's the more interesting you want high cultural diversity, which we do not have here in Boulder. And the reason they say that is because when you have higher cultural diversity, people are more accepting of other viewpoints. And they're more accepting of nonconformity, whatever that means to them. Yeah. And then the last one is you want to have, you know, there's this long research on on clusters in Silicon Valley. And you know, you know, all this stuff about clustering and agglomeration and knowledge, spill overs and industry and all that stuff. What they're saying is actually what you want. From this perspective, there's nothing technological about and by the way, what they're studying here is food truck density, right? Really interesting thing and the way they collected this data is fascinating. We will get them on some time to talk about because they actually gathered it using Twitter. It's fascinating the methods in this paper, it's really cool. You want other similar adjacent craft industries. And the way they measure that in this paper is the density of craft breweries, and food truck locations. Now we know that craft breweries because we live in one of these places, craft breweries also often host food trucks, food license, so there's an underlying mechanism there, it makes me a little doubtful that when I'm like, okay, that's cool. But the way you measured it, there's probably some underlying causality has nothing to do with culture. Here's what you don't want, though. And I love this, you do not want high conformity in the industries you're surrounded by. And conformity they measure is number one, the density of steak houses is great, like, like how many steak houses are in the state? Okay, that's a high conformity city, there's a lot of steak houses are all pretty much the same thing. Or steak houses. And if you don't buy that one, because I know you're from Chicago, and there's a lot of great steak houses in Chicago, and they're not the same, right? The second one is chain restaurants, density of chain restaurants representing high conformity in a community. And they actually find a negative relationship between food truck entry, and the number of chain restaurants. Now you and I might say, hey, well, that's actually an opportunity. There's always chain restaurants, people are sick and they want something now they actually find out that's not good for you, because people are not used to it and they're not willing to say, by God, I'm gonna go to eat at the food truck instead of TGI Fridays, no screw that. I'm going to TGI Fridays. So this is actually I really believe this is helpful for our craft entrepreneurs, like you want to go to university towns, preferably with high cultural diversity, and you want to go to places that have a similar not necessarily a lot of competition, but similar kind of craft aesthetic going on and you want to avoid putting He says with high density of chain restaurants. I thought that was pretty cool. I was

Brad WernerÌý 55:04Ìý
like places that I'd like to live anyway, I mean, chain restaurants, right? I mean, who, who chooses to live? There are a lot? Well, there's

Jeff YorkÌý 55:12Ìý
a reason they exist, right? Oh, yeah, no, I

Brad WernerÌý 55:14Ìý
know, I'll say taking my takeaway from the paper, which is something that I believed for a long time. Authenticity, by definition is critical. Yes, maintaining that authenticity as you grow is very, very difficult. And I'd love to talk to your folks so that we can even go more in depth into find out if there's a tipping point, what that means in all of those other things. Yeah,

Jeff YorkÌý 55:36Ìý
well, let's get Titan Daphne on to because I think it's a really interesting paper. And unfortunately, we don't have enough time to talk about the methods behind this. But it's truly fascinating what they did. It's very, very creative. And they actually identify that very question, Brad is something for future research. So I think that's something they would love talking about. So cool. But it's Todd shilling. And definitely Dimitri knew the new food Chuck in town. I keep thinking of, what's that song? There's a new kid. Anyway, the papers called the new food truck in town, geographic communities and authenticity based entrepreneurship. Go check it out. It's an organization's science online, it's open access, so you won't have to pay 50 bucks like Brad.

Brad WernerÌý 56:17Ìý
Oh, that's amazing.

Jeff YorkÌý 56:18Ìý
I know, I know, I'm liking these folks already. See, I'm making all mine open. These wonderful journals offer you the opportunity to pay them only, like, you know, $100 to make it open access. So that's very generous to them to do that, I think for their free resources again. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed talking about Brad, I think there are some lessons better. I think it's kind of cool. I mean, figure out where to go do your craft business.

Brad WernerÌý 56:42Ìý
Here's my balance between the paper and going for a bike ride with jadis What is it called the gun gel jadis

Jeff YorkÌý 56:49Ìý
jadis joy rides at JD is joy rides done yeah, JD

Brad WernerÌý 56:51Ìý
is dry, or dry land distillers. I'm going to take the paper with me but I'm going to go for a joy ride on the way to the store you

Jeff YorkÌý 56:58Ìý
go. Well, I don't know what I can add to that. Alright, thank you. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate you stopping by the creative distillation podcast brought to you by the Denning Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. My name is Jeff York. Once again, my guest is Brad Warner. And we were joined today by dryland distillers. You can check them out at dryland distillers.com wonderful beverages. Also check out JTS joy rise, calm our other sponsor, take a electric bike tour of Boulder, Colorado. And if you have any feedback for us, please send us an email we're at cp podcast@colorado.edu that's not CD like seeds you plant your tomato plant with or whatever plant you're joining Atlanta. It's not at CD podcast, it's C is in creative D is in distillation. podcast@colorado.edu

Brad WernerÌý 57:51Ìý
By the way, those emails come directly to my inbox. So I'd love to hear from some folks.

Jeff YorkÌý 57:57Ìý
All right. If you enjoyed what you heard today, hit the subscribe button. Post your review tell others. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks. My pleasure, Brad. great talking to you. Yeah, you too.

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