The Marketing Genius Behind Go Brewing's Non-Alcoholic Beer w/ Joe Chura | builders podcast

0:00Focus on that thing that you don't think there's an audience for, because I promise you in the scheme of the world, there's people like you and there's an interest level that you may not even know exists.

0:14Joe Chura had a successful career building businesses serving the auto industry, ultimately selling those in 2018. And then during COVID had a moment of enlightenment, which he shares during the podcast. And he started a craft non-alcoholic brewing company called Go. which creates dozens of varieties of non-alcoholic beers, has a tap room, and is growing like crazy, not just in retail, but in direct-to-consumer sales. We talk about how and why Joe started the business, his approach to marketing, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

0:53Hi, Joe. How are you? Good to see you today. Hey, John. Great to see you. So we've got a lot to talk about today. You had a long and successful career in the auto industry at Ford Motor and a few startups, which we'll talk about. But you recently, in the last few years, moved away from the auto industry and started a brewery exclusively for non-alcoholic beers. What was the impetus for starting something brand new and why go into this new category? What a great question to start with. I'm sure your listeners can relate to this. Sometimes in life, you feel that something's just missing. And I felt like after I built these companies to 450 employees, starting from the local library, like hands on keyboard, interviewing people to finding my first place to just growing this thing organically, and then selling it in 2018.

1:49I felt like I should be on top of the world. But after I sold the company, I found myself as the CEO of this now much bigger organization. And I stayed on to grow that organization to double its growth to over 850 employees. We tripled revenue. But that started to create a lot of tasks and activities that didn't give me a lot of energy. So the complexities compounded significantly when we had thousands of clients, hundreds of employees. You can imagine that your day isn't spent necessarily doing the things you want anymore. It's very reactive. And it led me to a really kind of cloudy, dark place when on paper, I felt like I achieved the ultimate American dream.

2:42And then what happened was I started drinking a little too much. I know everyone's relationship to alcohol is very personal, but I watched my father succumb to alcoholism in 2006. My brother, who's four years younger, was in the hospital every week almost. He was 100 pounds overweight and was killing himself. And I knew I had this, these genetics, like many, many of us are plagued with that would, were not conducive to having even a little bit of alcohol. So I would have some and then I'd want more. And what I found was, it wasn't until I abstained in the middle of COVID out of all times, I felt this clarity.

3:29I got under the cloud of alcohol and I felt like I had superpowers. My skin started to look better. I thought I had these perpetual bags under my eyes. Those went away. I lost a bunch of weight. But more importantly, I had this mental clarity, as I had alluded to. But that led me to not have as much anxiety just in general life. And that is when, after 30 days of abstaining, my life went from black and white to color. I'd say I started to see things in a different way and I still had these massive cravings because I built this habitual drinking pattern over decades and I'd say I was a moderate drinker I wasn't the guy that would wake up and drink a bottle of booze that's why I was saying like alcohol is very personal to people but I knew that I was headed down down the wrong path and the only thing that curbed my craving when I had it was non-alcoholic beer and and this was this was 2020.

4:26And it just kind of stuck in my head like, man, could there be another product out there? And certainly there was a couple emerging that we all know today. Some of the biggest breweries today are just non-alcoholic and they're amazing. But it really started to kind of fuel this pull toward this new thing to, could I create a tangible product outside of Pixels, the software company, marketing company I built to not only help me, but other people as well. Wow, that's a really cool and personal story. And thank you for sharing that. What made you decide that, though, that you wanted to like, like start a brewery and start a new, a new, a new company?

5:09Like, like that clarity gave you all the options. Why did you say I've got to I've got to create this, you know, this thing that I was that you know, that you were, you were drinking? So part of it was this entrepreneur itch that I knew I wanted to do something else. And the more I thought about what I wanted to do, I didn't get a lot of energy from it. I started to really gauge, if I'm talking to someone, am I getting energy? If I'm researching a subject, am I getting energy? The last companies I built, we somewhat disrupted the automotive industry, which is a huge industry with huge players.

5:44And we were underdogs and bootstrapped. And we had, on paper, no one would have ever thought we could do what we did. And I wanted to take that same kind of mentality and that same underdog spirit and apply it to something else. And I was looking at, like, can I disrupt real estate? Can I disrupt X, Y, and Z? And none of it was really giving me a lot of energy. But then when I had this experience of abstaining from alcohol and really I found this product, it started to pull at me in a different way. And then the culmination, believe it or not, was an event I had. An event was, it was aptly named Go.

6:21It was, and Go Brewing is the name of my company. But I had this event and I wanted to start the event with an activity. So I had this podcaster and this person that really influenced my life in a major way, Rich Roll, out. And Rich was at this event and we started off with a 5K run together and we did a fireside chat. And I really wanted to follow his spirit of mood follows action. So you've got to start taking action in life. And if you're in a rut, the best thing you could do is take steps in a direction. Just start to move. Just start to do something. And that applies to really anything. And I'm at this event called Go.

7:01And at the end of the events, I didn't want to hand out alcohol. We just got done working out with this amazing event. It was really centered around health and wellness. and I ended up handing out athletic brewing, to be honest with you. So I'm handing this out and I'm like, yeah, like what if there's a better variety? And what if, you know, what if I could, what if I could create a product like this? So that's really when it started to like manifest itself. And then, um, and then I talked to my wife about it. Who's the ultimate decision maker in the family. And I said, I said, I said, honey, I have this idea.

7:32And, you know, I've, I'm, I'm not the idea guy. Every day I'm coming up with ideas, but I certainly had passions and I would be very emphatic about them. But when I talked to her about this idea and knowing how it affected our life and reducing alcohol consumption, she was like, oh my God, this is amazing. I love it. Let's do it. And that gave me permission the next day to start doing a little bit of research. And I posted a job. That was the first thing I did. So anyone that is looking to create a business, typically in business school, you create a business plan, do all these things. I'm a big believer in you have to look at stages and you have to look at what I consider tranches of risk.

8:15And that might be a weird phrasing, but to me, it makes sense. And that, okay, what's the thing I could do right now that's going to help me take that next step? And that thing was like, all right, I need to find someone that knows how to make beer because I didn't. The only thing I knew about beer is how to drink it. And if I don't do that, why am I going to create a company? Why am I going to form an LLC? Why am I going to do all this stuff? I'm like, I really just have to find a partner. And that's kind of really what started it. And just the thinking of like, I could create this tangible, physical thing outside of pixels.

8:49My life was all about pixels and software and marketing that could help other people. I would just wake up and get so fueled from it. And that really started to be very, very true when the company started. And all those cloudy feelings I had at the end of my last company started to go away. And I started to feel the sense of energy that I hadn't felt in a very long time. And that's because I was hands on keyboard again. I was doing the marketing. I was creating the QuickBooks account. I was doing the things that you need to do that I was like, this is it. I couldn't pinpoint. And it's still that moment in time that that is the void that was missing in my life.

9:27because you oh it's good go ahead joe sorry to interrupt for all intents and purposes you know you look you'd look at me and you'd be like oh my god like that was amazing that you're able to build this company and sell it in five years and it was and i'm i agree but like yet i wasn't fulfilled in a weird way the best times in work and in life is when we get up and we're excited to do what we're about to do it's giving us energy we can't wait to do the next thing it's it's awesome that you found that and i think i think it's funny i i grew up in digital my whole career in digital also. And you found a technical co-founder.

10:00I mean, that's essentially what I take. You found your CTO. In this case, someone who understands brewing, understands science, understand. But that totally makes sense to me. I think while the non-alcoholic beer market is growing, I think it's still really, really small compared to alcoholic beer. That's my understanding. um i did dry january and uh and it was the first time that um that i had had athletic brewing i thought it was good i think my previous experiences were with some uh i let's just i don't want to like call anybody out but like some some sort of big brand name not alcohol beers it just kind of sucked and so um so athletic was interesting to try for for the uninitiated can non-alcoholic beer have the same like nuance and flavor and taste that a quote unquote real beer or alcoholic beer can have?

10:51What sacrifices, if any, are made in the actual brewing? Contextually, it depends. But I would say the answer is absolutely. And that's kind of the whole point of it. And that was our main focus is to make the best product on the planet because we knew if it didn't taste as close to what you'd expect from an alcoholic beer wouldn't work because it doesn't give you that placebo effect, doesn't give you that fulfillment. if it tasted like flavored water. So the caveat here is depending on the beer style. So if you're a light beer lager drinker and you have our Pilsner, you'd be hard pressed to tell that it's non-alcoholic.

11:27Like you probably wouldn't be able to tell on a blind taste test. You had our sour, same thing. Now, if you had our double IPA, we actually have a double IPA non-alcoholic beer, which to any beer connoisseurs, it drives them crazy that we have this, which I love. but they if they taste it against a regular ipa it's going to taste different it's going to taste a lot lighter because it's you're talking about something that has 40 50 calories to something that has 250 calories because what i didn't know getting in this space is alcohol has seven calories per gram so all of those calories that you're getting from beer and from alcohol are actually completely wasted calories and your body prioritizes those so it's no wonder why we drink and then we eat bad and then we look in the mirror a year or two later and we're like, man, what happened to us?

12:11Well, it's because of that. Because your body, when you go to sleep, it's prioritizing. That's why many people wake up at two in the morning and have to go pee because your body's finally like, okay, this is out of my system now. But it disrupts our sleep. And I'm sure you and many people where, and I know myself, I have two gadgets on that monitor everything now in my life. And it's clear, clear, clear when you're drinking what happens. So it depends. But I will say that what you don't get, obviously the hangover, the negative effects, you get a lot less calories and you have this rehydration that's happening with this maltose in non-alcoholic beer that doesn't have the alcohol.

12:54So you actually have a lot of positive effects from it because it has less alcohol than like a glass of orange juice. The flavor varieties We have everything from a grapefruit IPA to we made a donut stout last year and various five different IPAs. So it's very expansive. I will say when you get into the darker beers and if you're comparing that to, you know, again, like a 10 % stout, you're going to tell a difference for sure. But you're not going to have that bloat. you're not going to feel that waste that many of us felt when we're having two IPAs. And it just is so different. And then what happens is you start to crave that taste versus the taste of something heavier.

13:44So then when I went back to drinking a regular IPA, because I still drink in moderation today, very controlled, I'm like, man, this is so heavy. I can't even finish one of them. So it's pretty great that I'm able to do that. And that in turn helps me as well. It's morning here, but my mouth's kind of watering as you explain all of this stuff. And as I understand your business model, you can buy it in store. And I don't know if that's regulated by in the same way that alcoholic beer is regulated, but you also sell direct to consumer. Does being a non-alcoholic brew allow you more flexibility in this category?

14:22And what have you had to learn and navigate about regulations in this space? Yeah. So one of the other things, John, I didn't completely explain is that once I had the idea for the business, once I had the brewer, the other thing that really drawn me, that drew me to it is the fact that I could sell online. If I could not sell online, I would not have started this business. Because not only did I not know how to brew beer, I had no idea how to get into a retail store, to bars, restaurants. That was so foreign to me. I haven't been in the space. I wasn't a beer rep ever. I just didn't know any of that.

14:55but I what I did know is that I could build a product build a brand I knew how to build a business I knew how to build a mission I knew how to get people behind it and I know how to sell online that's what I did I was I'm an SEO nerd I'm an SEM nerd I do that I instead of watching football like I literally build stuff on the computer I'll go into the corner and work on an email flow so I was so passionate about that that I knew that oh I get to play around now Like, this is cool. And if that wasn't a possibility, there's no way I would have even started. The other thing is I'm like, since I don't know the other side of the business, why don't I build a brand, get reviews, start to do things a little bit different, find these gaps that non-alcoholic products can get away with that alcohol can't, which I could talk about that a little bit.

15:49And then really drive a recurring customer base. and one of the things that I was able to do and I really believe in is the power of having an audience and you know this very well for having a podcast and for having an audience to have guests on and talk about your expertise in marketing and businesses is that once you have an audience, that is extremely valuable. And if I was able to grow this audience, I could email them and I don't have the same acquisition cost of acquiring a customer. I could talk to them about our new beers. I could get them to join the beer club and then really start to build this brand and get them to advocate for us in market before we're in market.

16:30And then all of a sudden, let the retailers start approaching us. Let the wholesalers start coming to us. And at the same time, work on finding an expert in sales that actually understands the space. And that's exactly what happened. In the first year, we sold 25 ,000 orders online in 23 across the country, all but seven states. Those seven states, not to get in the weeds, but there's seven states out there that consider non-alcoholic beer alcohol, even though, again, it has less alcohol than orange juice. But for the rest of the 43 states, you can order online and you'll have it. It's your house in two days, which is pretty amazing.

17:08And we've sold over 50 ,000 orders. We have 1 ,100 beer club members. Our email list is well beyond 40 ,000. And it's just compounding and compounding and compounding. And what I'm doing now is building that list and creating advocates and ambassadors to then represent us in the market. So really crowdsourcing our team up there. And that's another thing that I don't think the big companies, they don't really need to do it, but they've never built a beverage or beer company in this way because they were just so big, they would go to retail first. Well, in the next five years, I can't imagine where we're going to be if we're already at this point today.

17:47And I'm excited about that because we come out with a new product now. Last week, we launched our Oktoberfest. It sold out. We sold 200 orders in 24 hours across the country. So it's really exciting. Congratulations. That is very exciting. You used the phrase club, advocate, etc. How would you describe the community of non-alcoholic beer drinkers? What's sort of special about this group of people? Oh man, there's so much to it. It is the best industry to be in right now because it's a movement. So you're a top brand in a movement. And not only do you have this cohort of customers that want to seek moderation and make healthier choices, you have this other cohort.

18:33I knew they existed. I didn't know they would be drinking non-alcoholic beer. And that's the sober community. and the silver community had nothing before this. I mean, they were like, you know, if you stop drinking, what were your options? Your options were that beer you had alluded to and seltzer water and, you know, some things, but not much. Now we have a tap room that people can go to a place for community. We have 12 NA beers on tap. We have the ability for them to be part of this beer club. And they're such advocates of this because it's a pure discovery moment. I think the stigma is, I don't even say it's going away.

19:11I think it's gone for the most part of why are you drinking any beer? It actually is becoming cool. And this thing like, what is that? I want to try that. We have people coming in every day into our ecosystem that have never had a non-alcoholic beer, but I've heard about it or their friends are recently sober or coming back. So the community is unbelievable. And it's such a fun time to, to nurture that and, and to do the right things for them and to listen to them, what they want. I mean, that was my secret sauce of the last company. I would just talk to car dealers and say, what kind of problems are you having?

19:43Let me help you solve them. Same thing here. Like, what kind of beers did you drink when you were sober that you wish you could have again? And that's led us to the most popular beers that we have today. One of the things that you talk about, whether when I'm seeing you on LinkedIn and other places, other things that Go is doing, is you've kind of taken this digital mindset or the SEO, SEM mindset of always testing rapid iteration. And I'm sure you do that online, but I think you also do that with beers. You're launching new beers and figuring out if they work or not. I saw Amazon when I was there do this all the time and it was really successful.

20:23Maybe tell me a story about rapid iteration where you found a beer that worked really well or one that maybe was a flop and you learned real fast. I'll tell you a fun story about a beer that we talked to a customer. I actually talked to one of our first retail customers. It's an NA bottle shop in Lafayette, Indiana, Generation NA. Pioneer in this small town where Purdue is and built this NA bottle shop. So I'm in there one day and all he has is non-alcoholic products all around his shop. Obviously, that's all he sells. He has more styles of beer than I even knew existed. I'm like, there's this many NA companies out there that are making beer.

21:02A little daunting and scary because I'm like, oh man, this space is already crowded. And I just simply ask him, I'm like, hey, Rob, what is the most popular beer style that people can't get enough of? And he said, a double IPA. And he's like, these double IPAs that were here, they just sell like crazy. And I'm like, hmm, interesting. Okay. And I'm like, and what about packaging? Like what's gravitating? Because people don't really know, you know, what's good and what isn't good. So they're obviously gravitating toward a certain design style. So he points out a couple that are doing well. He's like, you're doing well.

21:37This other brand is doing well. So he points to that. I'm like, great. So I take that back. On the way back, I call our head brewer. I'm like, we got to make a double IPA. He's like, double IPA? And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, all right. So literally start working on a double IPA. And this is the beauty about having your own production, John, which is another huge thing that I didn't even realize how important it would be. It does occupy a lot of time and it's kind of a shit show sometimes, but at the same time, owning our own kind of innovation platform is huge. So we're able to have an idea like the one I got from Generation NA.

22:11We're able to push it out to market on our website and test it. So not only do I test of sales, which are obvious, but I actually have heat maps. I look at click data. So if I have a new can design, I'll have two different cans of the same style and see what your people gravitating to. So I do that. And then we watch sales velocity. And then once I have a good idea, I'm like, oh, this is over-indexing, then I know it's a winner. And that actually led us to understand what would work in retail because we had no idea. Like when we first launched, we didn't even have this beer in our sites. And the other thing that we do is collect zero-party data.

22:51So that is post-purchase survey data. So if you go on our website today and you purchase a product, at the end, you'll get a survey pop up and I'll ask you a few questions. And I change those questions all the time based on what I want to know. And sometimes it'll be like, how'd you find us? Other times it'll be like, what's your relationship with alcohol? Other times, in fact, I just asked a question. I got a thousand responses on our carton branding because I said, what are some attributes that you look for outside of the beer styles? People are 100 % of flavor. uh sorry over indexed its flavor and then its galleries and and so forth but it's really kind of looking at that data understanding it and then hypothesizing hey will this work going forward to the broader market and the funny thing about that double ipa is it was made for an event in chicago so the whole beer the label and everything is is crafted around that and now that beer we had to change the name of it we had to modify the name we had to change the label change the meaning of it because now that beer is sold in Colorado, it's going to be sold in New York soon.

23:52It's going to be all over the US. So it really didn't make sense anymore. But we don't want to change the full name itself because it's already kind of built up a recognition of its own. So that's cool. What is the name? It was called Not Just Another Story. And now it's changing to The Story. And Not Just Another Story is an ode to the violence in Chicago and how I grew up on the South Side And even growing up till today, you turn on the news, there's certain pockets of neighborhoods in Chicago that are underserved and there's a lot of murders and violence there. And you hear these horrible stories, but it's not just another story to those families.

24:32It's not just another story to those kids. And so we wanted to make a beer and then donate part of the proceeds to nonviolence Chicago to help people get out of gangs and so forth. But then it was meant to just be one to two iterations of that. And then obviously, you can see, even though that's a great cause, it's not really going to hit well in Texas and New York. It's not super relevant. So I changed it to my story, which is still a meaning. But my story is the most important story is the one you tell yourself. And how do we take that in life and carve our own paths, which still play homage to that cause, but it expands more to the broader audience.

25:12It's really interesting how you're thinking about branding and personal stories to everything you're doing and everything you're crafting. I wonder, you started at Ford Motor Company and then I think your digital business was built around serving dealers, if I understand it correctly. Were there certain things about the auto industry or car manufacturing or something like that, that when you went into the brewing industry, you had a massive advantage through learning this random thing in this other part of the economy? me? Yeah, I think some of it was about asking customers what I had talked about before and making that your source and taking away your ego of product iteration and development.

26:04Because that was really important to me. The other thing is, when we were growing Dealer Inspire, we built a support system. And by the time I left as CEO, we had 6 ,000 dealers. We would get 15 ,000 support tickets on a monthly basis of like, hey, can you change this on my website? Can you do X, Y, and Z? And we were able to have very good customer satisfaction rating by having great processes in place, SOPs, and just really making sure the team understood the importance of that. And the way I talked about the business was we're going to bring people in with innovation, but we're going to retain them with service to make them feel great about their experience, about being a part of it.

26:45And that works very, very well. So the same thing applies here is that we are going to innovate on styles. We're going to be edgy in our branding. We're going to bring people in because they're interested and they like our brand. But when they buy online, we're going to take care of them. You're going to get the product in two days. If you have an issue with it, you're going to contact us. We're going to back to you in five minutes, not five hours, not five days. My experience buying online is horrible. And you grow to expect that a little bit. You expect late shipments, you expect poor customer service.