Young Henrys

Mat:

It's good to be a local, to have roots in your community, to feel connected to other people doing life alongside you. Or, like the song says:

"You want to go where everybody knows your name"

Cheers was famously set in Boston, which is where Help Scout was born, but as a fully remote software company with a global customer base, our community, our customers and friends are dispersed. But this episode's guest, Oscar McMahon, very much has the full Cheers experience. 

Oscar:

We're one of those odd businesses that if you walk into a pub, everyone in that pub is your customer. The cellar person, bartender, manager, person at the bar. 

Mat:

Oscar is the co-founder and director of Young Henrys, a brewery right here in Sydney, Australia. In this episode, I talk with Oscar about building that business and how music and community and culture are all really part of their definition of customer service. Also, we talk about algae. It's The Supportive. 

Oscar:

My name is Oscar McMahon. Well, my name is actually Oscar Nicholas Preston Stanley McMahon. 

Mat:

Now, if you're listening to this on audio, then hearing that quite extensive name might have given you a certain impression of Oscar's vibe. Like maybe his name should end with Esquire. But in real life, Oscar looks more like Ned Kelly if he joined a rock band instead of becoming a bush ranger in 19th century Australia. And if you're American and you've never heard of Ned Kelly or bush rangers, just imagine Billy the Kid except with a really sick beard and a full suit of homemade bulletproof armour. Ned Kelly actually was played in a movie in 1970 by rock legend Mick Jagger. 

Mick Jagger: 

“Such is life.”

Mat:

And as you'll hear, music is an important part of today's story too. But I'm getting off track already. You can get on the Help Scout YouTube channel, watch a clip from this interview, Take a look at Oscar for yourself. I do apologize for the lower quality recording, by the way. Oscar and I chatted in person, but I had a camera failure and I had to use the backup phone recording. But let's get back to it. 

Oscar:

I'm one of the co-founders of Young Henrys, which is a nearly 14-year-old brewery in Newtown. Independent craft brewery. Those words mean something to some people and not a lot to others. but basically it means a business that we created, funded and ran ourselves for 14 years. And it's still going. 

Mat: How long do you think you can continue to be young Henry? 

Oscar:

I think I'm well and truly middle-aged Henry these days. But there is a youthful exuberance that, I guess our sort of brand and our company energy sort of fits into that space. We have a lot of, you know, young team members, you know, in our sales marketing crew and, and our brew team. And also, you know, the people that we deal with a lot, um, are younger. Like you think about our most important sort of constituents, they're bartenders, they're people that are worth in bottle shops, retailers. Um, you know, the average age of the person serving young Henrys is usually, you know, 25 or under. 

Mat:

The name Young Henrys came from the child of another co-founder, Richard Adamson, who Oscar bonded with over their shared love of beer. 

Oscar:

So Richard and I, we met when I was working in a pub and he was just leaving Barron's Brewing at that time. And so we started a craft beer club called Beer Club. You know, genius.

"Strong".

Yeah. But I think what was good about that, that was about, that was probably about 16 years ago now. That was just in the back room of a pub. and we started seeing this excitement of people we'd flick out an email and you know 30 people would turn up and they'd always come you know each month it turned out that we had about 120 people on the mailing list of engaged people that would turn up and they were really interested they were really engaged they were all becoming friends he said those cohort actually ended up working in the beer industry, which is really cool. But it was that that we saw and went, hang on, there is something here. People are coming together through a love of beer and there's something exciting here. 

Mat:

They weren't being served really by the existing options. 

Oscar:

No. Like you go back 16 years, you couldn't walk into a pub and know that there would be a craft beer tap, let alone an independent craft beer tap. you know, the landscape now is where you can pretty much walk into any pub anywhere and you will be able to get a craft beer of decent quality. Probably by reputable rant, there's probably some independent options as well. 

Mat:

What does craft beer mean? It's not an accompaniment to Kraft Mac & Cheese. It's about small-scale, innovative, often more traditional forms of brewing, sometimes from independent companies, but not always. 

Oscar:

So the landscape has changed, but back then, one of our other co-founders, Dan Hampton, he had a beer club across town in the eastern suburbs. So it was really funny. We were both doing these similar things at the same time. Yeah, I guess the idea for Young Henrys came out of what if we could create a company that was in touch with the people who drink the beer, kind of like beer club is, this sharing of excitement and engagement. I think that it does feel nice to know that we are still as focused on engagement with our customers and our end consumers as ever before. 

Mat:

And that's where Young Henrys the company really began. But I think to understand the type of company that it became, we need to talk about the place it was born. Because more than any other company that I've talked to, certainly for this podcast, Young Henrys is really tied into its local community. In this case, the inner west area of Sydney. 

Oscar:

The Inner West is a real cultural melting pot. It is a late-night district. It is one of the largest year-volume-pouring postcodes in New South Wales. It has every single food culture on the planet represented in restaurants up and down King Street and Enmore Road, I think. You know, pretty close. Maybe don't fact check it, but it's pretty close. At least every continent is spoken for, I'm sure of that. 

Mat:

Well, I did fact check it Oscar, and there's very little Antarctic food represented. You can't get a penguin kebab anywhere on King Street. Put that on Snopes.com. 

Oscar:

There are hairdressers, tattoo shops, cafes, high school, university, TAFE. So you've got housing commission and you've got $5 million houses. You have this breadth of socioeconomic. You have diversity of gender, sex, race. You've got people running early morning businesses, late night businesses, education. It's a high foot traffic area. The train station gets, I can't remember the actual stats, but huge amounts of people through, especially on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It's a high street shopping area as well as being a dining district. So culturally, it is a fascinating place. 

Mat:

Think of maybe something like Williamsburg in Brooklyn or the Mission in San Francisco or Shoreditch in London, but like a while ago. Creative, multicultural, a safe place to be unusual or different in all sorts of ways. Oscar didn't live in the inner west as a kid, but there was something there that he deeply connected with once he found it. 

Oscar:

That's right. I lived in Forestville. I went and checked out some of the high schools in my local area and it just didn't feel right. And my mom said, oh, there's this performing arts high school in Newtown. It's just started off. And so I went and I tried out for drama and got in. And so I was like, okay, cool. That sounds like a fun thing to do. And I remember the first day of year seven, you know, 12 years old, walking down King Street from the train station and just like punks and lesbians and goths. 

Dorothy:

Lions and tigers and bears oh my 

Oscar:

It is like oh what what is this place and I just I really remember this like

(Mat: “It's not Forestville”)

It is not Forestville, totally,

Dorothy:

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

Oscar: And that being so challenging - almost scary, but also just this amazing thing. 

Mat:

It's a real broadening of "what is life". 

Oscar:

Absolutely. Like, honestly, for me, I think that was one of my real, like, fork in the road moments, you know? 

Mat:

And it was that carelessly discarded cutlery that led Oscar to what would be his lifelong love of music. 

Oscar:

I played guitar since I was 7, and so, yeah, music and drama was good in high school, but I guess acting kind of didn't really hold my attention, whereas music just became intrinsic to who I am.

 I think creative people need an outlet, and music just became that thing that, you know, I don't learn other people's songs. I've always just written it. Like the first time I picked up a guitar, I wrote a song.

 So that's just always been a release for me, some sort of, I guess, you know, self-help journaling sort of process of writing music and playing music. And yeah, I think that that's a lot of people within Young Henrys as well. We have a lot of musicians that either work there currently or have worked there. We've got, you know, we've had a few different ARIA winners. 

Mat:

The ARIAs are like Australia's Grammys. You might have heard of ARIA winners like The Kid Leroi, Nick Cave, and of course the Wiggles, who have their own young Henry. 

The Wiggles:

Henry the Octopus lives down in the deep blue sea. 

Mat:

All that high school guitar practice would soon be put to good use by Oscar in his role as vocalist in hard rock band The Hell City Glamours, who would go on to tour the US as well as support acts including Alice Cooper and Sebastian Bach in the early 2000s. 

Bands, like small businesses, are often tough going, and although the Glamour's called it a day, Oscar remained deeply embedded in the music scene. And in fact, it was those touring and playing experiences, along with doing the sort of pub work that so many musos have to take on, that fared into his perspective on how to build and run a business. 

Oscar:

A band is a really interesting model. It's a terrible business model. However, you are creating a brand. The brand has a look and feel. It probably has brand marks, has a brand name. People in bands dress a certain way, so there is a sort of visual to it. These days, bands have social media and all of that. It has a soundtrack. And where a band plays says something about a band as well. 

And the other thing is that a band very rarely, in our experience, has to make decisions based upon financial outcomes. Like, yes, to a point, but they never, it is usually like, oh, you might get paid X here or X here. That's a better venue to play at. So we're going to do that because that says more about our band than earning more over there. 

So you start actually making these brand choices of trying to grow a brand. When you're touring, you have a sound guy that comes with you. We used to have a videographer. We'd have lighting people. We'd often have drivers or other people. You'd be putting on support bands who were your mates and you'd want them to succeed as well. You'd be playing in places where you would get to know the publican, the bar teams. So it really becomes this ecosystem of a whole bunch of different people doing what they're really good at to make an outcome. And the outcome is essentially people coming in and having the time. People coming in and having their Friday night. 

What an awesome vocation. Take all the money shit aside. You're basically doing something to make people feel happy. That's really cool. So if you can take all of that thinking and apply that to a brand like Young Henrys, you know, what are we doing? We're selling beer. We're in touch with the hospitality industry. 

And like I said before, who are those people? Yes, we've got to talk to the people who own the pub. We've got to talk to the seller. We've got to, you know, we've got to know the manager and understand their margins and they are trying to be successful within their role. You've also got to speak to the bartenders because those are the kids that are actually going to be, you know, nine out of 10 schooners going to be poured by the people behind the bar. 

And it's really, it's really humbling in that sense. You can't get too big for your boots because you can't just become a head office only sort of company because then you're going to lose to all the people that are actually pouring the beers. 

Mat:

Even though the ultimate buyer of Young Henrys products are the people who drink them, they're not the company's direct customer. Instead, it's the people who buy the beer from the brewery, the people who decide which beers to put on which taps and in which venues and which stores. 

Oscar:

We're a customer-focused business. If we have a customer or a consumer, sorry, sorry, when I say customer, I'm referring to a wholesale customer. Our end consumer is also our customer. We're one of those odd businesses that if you walk into a pub, everyone in that pub is your customer. The cellarperson, bartender, manager, person at the bar. So if you have a delivery driver dropping off beer, if you have a salesperson doing a sales call, if you have a marketing person meeting with their publican or their marketing manager, trying to have an equal or similar experience across all of those touch points is what we strive to do. So that every time someone engages with someone from Young Henry, no matter what they're doing, they have a positive experience with a person who is good at what they do, speaks humbly, and is actually a decent person. 

Mat:

Decency and values, those are words that come up a lot talking to Oscar. To me, there seems to be a clear line from that open, accepting, creative, community-minded, inner-west vibe through to the way that Oscar speaks about himself, but also about Young Henrys. And in fact, the founding team at Young Henrys had their list of shared values formulated really early on. 

Oscar:

We actually wrote a list of values before we started the company. Before, yeah. Um, and when we were hiring a first sales guy, Ben Stocko Stockton, who's still with the business today and he's actually, he actually became a shareholder and, um, he's, he's fantastic. So he was coming on board and Dan, my business partner came to me and he said, ‘we know what this is all about, but how do we tell this new guy what it's all about?’ And I was like, oh, we've got all this written down. 

He said, ‘oh, that's right. Yeah. Okay. Great’. So he took it and he typed it up and did some edits. And that is what's referred to as our statement of values. And we've been reading that to every new employee in their first week and since. 

So what's great about that is that everyone coming in sits down with two founders. We read through the statement of values together. So they hear it from us directly, what it all means. like why we've said these, pointing out examples, you know, from history. So it's a really good thing for people coming in. They get the time. It's really good for us. It means that we're reading that multiple times a year, reminding us of where we came from and what it's all about. 

Mat:

What a great approach. I love that. Of course, having the values, it's one thing. Actually putting the values into practice consistently, that's another. I asked Oscar how integral those values are day to day. 

Oscar:

As long as the greater percentage are acting in line with those values, it becomes self-policing in a way. Because it becomes stark when someone is acting out of whack with the company values. And we've got heaps of examples of that, of where people, you know, due to a bunch of different circumstances, And sometimes all you need to do is just say, hey, listen, are you aware? And then they, yeah, hey, great. And it's a moment and they're all back in line with everybody else. The largest we've been for employees is around 85. And having 85 people running in one direction is really hard. 

But if you've got this commonality, you can have a really great experience. between all these different systems and like our business is not just like one department we've got brewing department logistics quality control marketing accounts sales like head office sales retail sales um you know but a tasting bar group all of these people are specialists in really different areas and they all have very different brain types um you know the quality control marketing, accounting, sales, they are like really different mindsets. Logistics, very black and white, you know, brewery production. But the values in the middle is what makes all of those different departments act cohesively. 

Mat:

The nature of values by definition is that they exclude certain viewpoints because they express an opinion about how things should be. They can't be everything to everyone. And that can make for a hiring challenge. 

Oscar:

You know, it's not a slogan on a wall. It's something that we have to embody. We have to understand and we have to actually, you know, project that into our workplace every single day. That's, you know, which is hard. It's really hard. It's really hard to be consistent with that. You know, you ask anyone running a business of any size, company culture is a causally evolving thing. You need to work at it every single day, in every single interaction. And that can be really tricky. You need to be consistent. You need to live and breathe the values. You need to hire as many people as you can who understand and represent those values as well. The employment pool has been stretched a lot in the 14 years we've been operating. 120 breweries when we started, over 700 now. There is one brewing university course and a brewing TAFE course that one of our co-founders, Richard, helped buy and create. About six or so years ago. 

Mat:

A beer brewing course. It's like Santa answered a college kid's Christmas wish list. 

Oscar:

So the amount of education and employment progression, you know, in the industry, for anyone who has had any interest in beer has been able to get a job in one of those beer companies as it's all blown up. So you have a very interesting friction point of trying to find people with relevant experience and values alignment. So more often than not, we will lean more towards values. Can't teach that. You can teach other things. 

And, you know, sometimes we do challenge ourselves and actually hire someone with like big beer experience because they come in with some acumen and some lens from working at you know like CUB, they can come in and and give us a view on ‘well this is how it's done on the other side’ and actually challenge challenge us to sort of step up a little bit and improve our processes and so you sort of need to you need that friction point.

 We as directors and founders, we know that we don't know everything. We are really open-minded and our mentality is always, what is the best outcome for the business? We do not care who comes up with the idea, your idea, their idea. It only becomes a great idea when everyone agrees that that's the way forward and everyone jumps on and runs at it. That's when it becomes a great idea. 

So having some different voices in the room in that process means that you are actually allowing yourself progress. We get to learn. We get to be challenged. Sometimes those more commercially minded, challenging voices actually push us to say, you know what, just because we've been doing that for 10 years, that's not actually the right way. Let's augment that. We could actually get a better outcome over here. Or it actually becomes the thing where you know, you know what? That's really important to us from a brand point of view. Let's stick with that. I think that that is that push and pull. You know, that's it. Like growth doesn't come from people being relaxed and sitting around calmly and everyone just getting along. And I don't mean that it's ever fractious, but you need a challenge, you need to be pushed.

Mat:

Do you think there's much of a tendency where you might avoid discomfort by leaning on the values and saying well it's just not a Young Henrys thing to do and so you can avoid a difficult situation, you know, in a way that might be problematic for the business in the long term?

Oscar:

We try to be more specific than just pulling out the ‘uh oh that's not the Young Henrys way’, we actually try to be more specific of ‘why’ or ‘well this is how we've done it, what are you trying to say and how could how could what you're trying to say be done in line with this’. Just rinsing and repeating is not the best way forward, you know. Just because we've been doing something a certain way doesn't mean that that should just be should just be you know.

I think some of the most interesting brands in the Australian market are ones that have allowed themselves to challenge themselves and evolve because if you're trying to look at it like we were saying before the craft beer demographic is generally 25 to 35 is going to be our most valuable because they're probably going to be with this the longest. 35 to 44, they buy the most, and then you've got the 45 to 54 who are constant but you know they're not going to be with you as long.

Mat:

What a delight to have reached the age bracket in which my lifetime customer value is no longer exciting to beer companies. A privilege, but a depressing one. 

Oscar:

For a brand to constantly be talking to 30 to 40 year olds consistently, you have to keep challenging. You can't just keep going along and age your brand up. You need to be reinventing. You need to be challenging. You need to be bringing in younger voices to be keeping as, as I get older, I need younger people challenging to say, we ‘Hey, this is actually going to resonate right now. This is what's happening. This is cool’. It's like, great. Fantastic. Here's some of our learnings. Here's your challenge. Okay, great. Let's put that together and go do something. And you know what? That creates equity from younger people. They get the experience of the other people in the room, but then you also get something which will legitimately resonate with people that you haven't spoken to before. 

Mat:

You'll need someone to tell you what the cool bands are now, not the ones from 10 years ago. 

Oscar:

That's exactly right. You know, I'm not the person to ask about who is the hot young band, you know, in the scene at the moment. Like, I'm not. Yeah. I'm nearly 44. I don't go out every Thursday, Friday, Saturday night watching bands on the strip. You know, like I'll tell you what, actually, here is a, here is a hot tip. I saw his band the other night, we had them at a Young Henrys event. They're called Liquid Zoo and they are, they are cool. It's like Primal Scream, Rolling Stones, The Stooges, um, this really cool, like edgy rock and roll band, sort of punk and out there, but with great musicality. awesome lead singer. Yeah, all right. So Liquid Zoo. 

Mat:

I had a listen. I definitely get the Stones comparison. Go give them some streams if you're into it. Hiring young people brings in new ideas while also helping young Henrys reach its business goals. Oscar mentioned that in his industry scaling is much more people-based. 

Oscar:

We have a clear view on the next phase of employment and where those roles would need to be. But we're sort of taking it from a stage gate point of view. We need to grow in certain areas. Then we add here, here, here. We are a human business. There are not a lot of tech solutions at the moment that really suit the way that a wholesale beer business communicates and sells to their customers. 

Mat:

Well, yeah, there's an opportunity, people.

Oscar:

Please hit us up if you have the answer! 

Mat:

But ultimately, yeah, it's a physical business with physical products. And so there is a, you just need a certain number of people in order to scale up. It's always going to need more people. 

Oscar:

That's right. And our customers are human businesses. You have a look at the stats of online shopping for beer. It's pretty low. People walk into bottle shops, people walk into pubs, people walk into restaurants. Human experience is actually really key at the moment. We're kind of coming out of that ‘everything online, social media’ thing where people are actually getting back to experiential moments. And, you know, human connection is more important than ever. We're really happy about that. And the sort of people that are our, you know, wholesale customers, they're in the hospitality industry. They have chosen to work there because they love people and they want to be around people. They want a good person to walk in and engage with them and understand what they're trying to do in their business. You know, that like-mindedness again, you know. 

Mat:

Relationship building extends outside of that direct business relationship too. Young Henrys find lots of ways to interact with their chosen community in the real world. They're frequent sponsors of music events. They've released special edition beers in partnerships with bands like YouAmI and the Foo Fighters. And those partnerships and sponsorships are all carefully chosen to reflect the values and the attitudes of the company and of the people that they're trying to reach. You can see that inner west vibe running through them all, even as the company now sells right across the country. Oscar's own band, which you'll remember was the Hell City Glamours, had a song called The Money, in which they sang this line. You're doing it all for the money, you're doing it all wrong. I asked Oscar if that's how he approaches the beer business too. 

Oscar:

Interesting. Um, that song was about, that song was about a lens on the music industry at the time. What was really interesting is that was written before streaming happened and all the money sort of came out of it. 

I guess that song was about, there was all of this great grassroots music that was not getting a platform because, you know, it was just big record companies that were sort of, you know, choosing a handful of bands. 

I mean, that became what the landscape was. With the parallel with, um, with Young Henrys, we have always tried to make decisions based upon something that we believe in, something that we believe is the right thing. We are a commercial entity. We need things 

Mat:

You do need some money. 

Oscar:

We do need some money. However, not everything. You know, we take a look where sometimes we will do a project that we know will not actually wash its own face, but we believe in it. 

Mat:

Yeah, I have a child like that. 

Oscar:

We think it's going to be interesting and fun and it's going to resonate with people. So you do that. As long as it is balanced by some other commerciality, somewhere else. And that is where you actually can still have a lot of fun in a business where not every single thing has to be about like, we're going to release this, going to make X here, going to do this. 

It's like, if you take a bigger approach to, I guess, commerciality, and then you look at smaller projects as what does this say about us and who will this resonate with? I think that's where you actually get that brand tension, where you are talking, you're constantly talking to a new audience and that propels you forward. That allows a brand to evolve, find new people. Because remember, a brand doesn't just grow and grow and grow. It doesn't just have people coming in and in. You have attrition, as we all know. You need to keep evolving. 

You need to keep doing things that resonate with your core audience who aren't going anywhere. But for that to balance out that attrition, you need to be finding new people. It is a constant thing, you know. 

Mat:

Understanding who your customers are, who your consumers are and what they value, that helps you decide how you want to show up in their lives. And for Young Henrys, that's gone beyond selling them beer they like at music festivals they enjoy. The tagline of Young Henrys is actually “Serve the People”; and I asked what does that mean? 

Oscar:

“Serve the People” means a lot of things. It is the reminder that you are only ever successful if you are adequately serving the people. So at a grassroots level, someone walks in, orders Young Henrys, and they're happy. That is where your success is. 

So that is everything. As founders and directors, we have to serve our people. We need to keep our people engaged, let them have voices, be heard, have career progression to feed into the values. You know, the set of values is not like, that's not something that I can do myself or Dan can do. 

It is a team thing, you know, um, serve the people is not just our mindset. It has to be the mindset of the team. And when they're going out and engaging in trade, then they are constantly having to think about how they are serving the people. Also, serve the people is a great thing in the way that it's a reminder not to take yourself too seriously. It's just be, hmm, serve the people. It's actually that simple. You don't need to get on your high horse about it. You don't need to overthink it. You know, sometimes it is just about, like no one's going to die on the operating table today. Just we can be. It's all right. 

Mat:

Oh, clip that one out, send it to your tech boss. But actually, Young Henrys is doing some work that might legitimately save lives, at least in the long term. Because like Help Scout, Young Henrys is a certified B Corporation. That means they're committed to doing some sort of broader social good. And that is a lot of work both to obtain and to retain. So I asked Oscar why that mattered to the company. 

Oscar:

Look, I think sustainability has always been a pretty important lens for us. Every time we've made big financial decisions to do with production and facility equipment, we always try to put a sustainable lens on it. We are a production business. We produce things. We're an industry, you know? So having some sort of responsibility for that is super key. 

We have a very large solar farm on the warehouses at Newtown. We have a high-efficiency brewing system, which uses less raw materials and less water, less power. And for the last over seven years, we've been funding a research project with UTS. 

Mat:

That's Sydney's University of Technology. 

Oscar:

Where basically, we now have a system where we're using microalgae in basically vats. We're capturing the CO2 from the brewing process. We're feeding that to microalgae. So instead of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, we're releasing oxygen. That microalgae can be added to the spent grain, which is one of our waste products in the breeding process. And when you add the microalgae to the spent grain, you feed it to cattle, you actually have a health benefit and you have low methane emissions. So UTS is our research partner. 

Meat and Livestock Australia have been a co-funder of some of the research in the last few years. We've actually done a lamb feedlot trial um 100 lambs being fed on the algae and brewer's sped grain diet which was um really positive and really fascinating um so essentially this is now you know it's a process and ip that we own and it basically allows a brewery or a winery or a cidery or a distillery or a kombucha factory to stop releasing CO2, release oxygen instead, and to create a valuable waste product that could help a second industry decarbonize. 

So it's sort of like a circular economics piece and Young Henrys has been funding it with some grants for seven years, but it's at a stage now where that actually needs to commercialize and become its own business. It sort of needs its own, uh, its own team really. It's been a really great thing.

And I'm super proud of our team for being able to keep that going whilst also running a beer company. Yeah. But we, um, yeah, it's getting to the point where we need some specialists, some algae specialists, whoever would have thought, you know, you get into the beer game and you become an algae nerd. But there we are. 

Mat:

Yeah, and then you've got customers who are not just humans but sort of also cows and sheep. 

Oscar:

Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, we're talking directly to farmers and supermarkets. 

Mat:

Young Henrys has shareholders to look after, so before they could start feeding cattle, they would need to get those fat cats on board. No, they're not fat cats. I'm sure they're perfectly proportioned and entirely human investors. But they do have responsibilities to them. 

Oscar:

Our shareholder collective love the algae project. They love Young Henrys and have always been supportive of, you know, these two different things coexisting. I think there's something, you know, in line with B Corp certification, you know, sustainable practices wherever we can and the algae project. None of those in and of themselves will make someone say, I'm going to adjust to a cow for the rest of my life. I don't believe that. It could be something which piques people's interest and then they could consider us for sure. I think it's more likely that those things are values that keep our existing customer base with us. When I say, well, you know, there are a couple of ways you can give value to a customer, right? You can drop your prices, we can do something valuable. We always try to do something valuable. And that is actually a way of keeping your customers engaged. Like, yeah, hey, they're still doing good things and I like the beer. Cool, I can get around that. 

Mat:

I love this approach. Understanding customer value is not just an exchange of a product for cash, but a way of identifying people who care about similar things to your business and then finding ways to build those things up too. It's connecting with the community in unexpected ways, but in ways that still align with everything else that they see from you. And Oscar went on to talk about their approach to marketing. 

Oscar:

What is marketing? It is something trying to trigger a human reaction. It's an emotional response. That's essentially what we're trying to do with marketing, right? So you could come up with a witty slogan and stick on a billboard. Sure, that could work. Or you just do something good and cool and valuable. And that will also elicit an emotional response for the right people you know being a small business in the beer landscape is a challenge in and of itself basically our competitors are multinationals you know yes there are a lot of other small brewers around us but the the hardest part of the market is not the smaller brewers it is the bigger, the bigger brewers. 

Them, uh, how they interact with trade. Um, look, it is, it is challenging, but we also have our advantages where a new ball, smaller entity that can do things in line with our people quicker. So we can, we can do something that will resonate with the market. We can test and learn a lot quicker. Um, we're also now of a size where we don't need to be the first to market with something either. We can sort of take our time and work out if something is right for us and for our people, because we know that when we do it, we'll do it well and it will resonate. Um, consumers are pretty savvy these days. People can sniff bullshit. And so new entities coming into the market, be they small and independent or by the big guys, it only really worries us when they're really good. And you know what? When they are really good, hats off to them, you know? 

Mat:

A major benefit of not being a multinational is that you don't have to try to keep every beer drinker in the country happy. 

Oscar:

It's quite freeing to take that thought. We don't have to hit everybody you know, we know our brand quite well and so we know our customers quite well and being able just to work within that sort of channel whilst also trying to do things on the periphery to sort of widen that scope…it's it's a lot of fun and anytime we do something we need to have an internal champion so you know our partnership with the Rabbitohs. We've got a bunch of rabid rugby league fans within the business and some South Sydney diehards. That has been one of our best partnerships because that is the football team of our heartland. And there are heaps of pubs that fill up on game days. 

Mat:

The South Sydney Rabbitohs are the rugby league team that's part-owned by Maximus himself, Russell Crowe. 

Russell Crowe:

They'd got into a situation where they'd just become perennial losers and I got absolutely sick of it. So I put some money down, took over, and step by step we've changed the culture of the club. 

Mat:

Wouldn't that be a nice option to have for your favourite team? 

Oscar:

So we're not just a rock and roll brand. We're a music brand. We are a football brand. We're a sustainability brand. We make beer. We make beer, but we also talk about all these other things which are on the periphery of, if our people are drinking a beer, what are they doing with it? They're listening to music. They're watching the football. (Mat) Eating some algae. They're eating some algae.  (Mat) Sushi?

Oscar:

Sushi. We should do a sushi beer. That's a great idea. I'll cut you in.

Mat:

As we wrapped up, I wondered if Oscar saw a connection between his independent brewery fighting for space in a world of multinational companies who could buy all the tap space they need and independent musicians trying to be heard. 

Oscar:

Well, I mean, I think one of the most interesting independent bands in Australia is King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. 

Mat:

It's a real band. They’re good.

Oscar:

They just seem to do whatever it is that they want and they've set up their own record label. They've owned their own touring, I think, Um, and they now, uh, bringing up other bands onto their label. I think that's a really fascinating band to watch. I think a better word for independence is challenger. We have a challenger mindset and that is actually a thing which is compelling within our brand. Independence used to be the challenges to the norm. it almost seems like that resonates less with people these days but the challenger mindset is what can actually propel you forward to continue doing interesting things you know and you know you look at the clash the clash were punk rock they signed to a major record label there was furore but then hey turns out that was still the clash yeah they were still more punk than everyone else. So, you know, I think we want to keep challenging. We want to keep challenging ourselves and challenging to grow. And at this point in time, you know, we're an independent business. We're having a lot of fun with it. So long may that continue. 

Mat:

This was a very different type of business than the norm for the supportive. But I quickly saw some pretty deep similarities. Young Henrys know who they're trying to reach. They've been authentically part of their community for a long time. They're doing the work. 

Just like Todd Curtis from YNAB in the last episode, he was a budget nerd before he started selling budgeting software. Chris Savage was making video before he started Wistia. Oscar was also clear on the benefits of being a small company who could stand out by doing things differently, moving more quickly, not trying to suit everyone.

I love that idea of the founders reading the values out to every new team member. It's just about the perfect encapsulation of a small company who is doing something that can't easily scale, but is so impactful while you can do it. And I also loved his whole company approach to service, that every person at every touchpoint should be communicating that same Serve the People message through the way they interact with all the people they work with in the community and in the businesses. 

Those values are easy to say, but they get put to a real test in the world every day. So, huge thank you to Oscar for spending time with me. And if you're in Australia, you can go buy a couple of pints of Newtowner Pale Ale to say thanks. I know I will. 

I've been Mat Patterson. Thank you for listening to this episode. Hope you enjoyed it. Hop into Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Give it a rating. Give it a review. It does help. 

And if you do sink a few brews and you feel like you need an afternoon nap, maybe wait for the next episode because I'm chatting with Derek Hales. He's from NapLab. We're going to talk about mattress reviews. Talk to you soon.