Notes
[00:00:34]
Episode 7 Overview
[00:04:02]
Historically – What Happened to The Eureka! Ranch When They Didn’t Innovate
[00:06:57]
Investing in Innovation Makes You Stronger
[00:09:10]
Eureka! Inventing and Innovation Engineering – What are They?
[00:14:30]
Driving Eureka! Book Excerpt
[00:16:33]
The Increasing Speed of Change the Internet is Driving
[00:16:51]
The Data on Innovators and Non-Innovators – How Did They Fare?
[00:19:45]
New Offerings Bring New Customers
[00:20:26]
The Time to Act is Before Things Get Bad
[00:24:20]
Paired Comparison Testing
[00:24:44]
The Secret to Winning Whiskey Competitions
[00:25:50]
Win by 2 to 1
[00:29:29]
Craft Cocktail Recipe – Spanish Manhattan
[00:33:41]
The State of the Brain Brew Distillery
Transcript
Tripp: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Driving Eureka! podcast where we share ideas and advice for helping you find filter and fast track big ideas.
Tripp: [00:00:14] Hi I’m Tripp Babbitt advisor to global organizations on the Deming philosophy and host of the Deming Institute podcast.
Doug: [00:00:23] And I’m Doug Hall inventor speaker teacher and whiskey maker. I’m also the founder of the Eureka! Ranch and author of the driving Eureka book.
Tripp: [00:00:34] This is episode number seven of the driving Eureka podcast. This podcast corresponds with Doug Hall’s weekly newsletter at Doug Hall dot com. Just look for newsletters this week or feature story is titled will be the best or worst of times in 2019. The driving Eureka book segment is called It’s a dickens of a time in the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy segment discusses paired comparison testing and the craft cocktail recipe is the Spanish Manhattan your newsletter.
Tripp: [00:01:12] Doug talks about will 2019 be the best or worst of times for you and it’s interesting to me just as much as you like Ben Franklin and you’ve kind of got all his stuff and and know kind of his history. Charles Dickens my guy I love I love Charles Dickens and therefore when I went to London I did a little Fleet Street tour going by Ye Old Cheshire Cheese and some of the pubs that he frequented. You know on your way up to St. Paul’s but I really like his stuff and in fact I just watched The Man Who Invented Christmas last night. So it’s a good movie about him writing a Christmas Carole.
Doug: [00:01:51] I oh you’ve seen it. Yeah I just saw it. I was. I wish it was. You know we just stumbled into it but it’s well worth watching. It’s really well worth watching.
Tripp: [00:02:00] Oh absolutely. Oh it was. It’s a great movie. So what’s pivot over to Will 2019 be the best or the worst of times for you. You’re talking here quite a bit about kind of looking ahead as far as things that are happening so I almost got the feeling when I when I read this segment that you’re starting to feel like we may be headed into a recession or something that you kind of there’s some words in there that you’re using that make me a little nervous.
Doug: [00:02:30] Well yeah it this is a bit of a rant about OK this is this is where you know being an old fart I guess I’ve been doing this for 40 years.
Doug: [00:02:40] I mean I guess I guess I well it’s a rant. There’s there’s no way around it. The feature story was will it be the best or the worst of times for you in 2019. And what happened is as I was sitting there sipping a little bit of our fine whiskey and on the news this was the day that General Motors announced a shut down. And and it was one story after the other and I watched the U.S. networks and then I turned to the CBC The National who tend to be quite balanced very balanced in my view not Canada. They think they’re extreme but I think it’s very balanced every year to what we see. Okay. I mean they’re not the BBC but they’re in that direction. And as they laid out and then they brought experts on to talk about things and they talked about and I don’t care what you want to talk about if you want to talk about that it’s because of the trade rules things going on the banking stupidity whatever you want to talk about it of you know the tax credit thing that put a one time bump in that they don’t care. What would you want to talk about it. There is a definite undercurrent that things are going to go down. What goes up goes down. And it just doesn’t go up can perpetually it goes up and go down. And I have lived through this over 40 years I have lived through this many times you know as it’s gone up and gone down.
Doug: [00:04:02] And so I was reminded of Dickens 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities where he said it was the best of times it was the worst of times. And and what I’ve learned from this is that when you reinvent yourself and you have technology and you have something that is meaningful unique it is truly the best of times when it goes down because everybody else huddles becomes the huddled masses. And when I first started the Eureka! Ranch it was a time of recession and we jolted because we had new news new things we were brand new company and we caught a big win got got to work for Walt Disney and Pepsi-Cola back when Pepsi Cola was the Apple of the day you know Michael Jackson and all other early dating myself now back in time you know. And it was it was really cool. And when the next time it came we didn’t have something and we suffered the next time there was a recession was when we really started into Innovation Engineering back in 0 8.
Doug: [00:05:08] And and we really started to push into that. And as I’m sitting here now looking at the potential for it you know as where we just announced that Innovation Engineering has you know the systems approach to innovation has gone from a beta to ready to go. I’m excited. I mean I’m excited about the potentials for doing this and then.
Doug: [00:05:33] And the reason I bring that up is because most people who write books as I do and who speak and who do stuff they preach but don’t practice they they talk a lot of stuff they tell you to do things but they don’t limit themselves. And I’m a great believer in learn from people that actually do what they’re they’re talking about. And so now really is the time now is the time to invest in big ideas the big bold patentable breakthroughs I mean get going now don’t wait. It’s also the time to invest in yourself. You’ve got to get yourself prepared in this crazy free agent economy that we’re in now so that you can think and work faster and smarter. And lastly it’s important to invest in your team. You’ve got to get your team really ready so that whatever happens you’re ready to pivot adjust and take advantage of the opportunities because there’s going to be tremendous opportunities coming tremendous opportunities coming. And so it’s just as we get to the end of the year as we start to think about things as we hear the chaos of the global economy whether it’s Brexit or the craziness in us whatever it is. And I’m not taking any political sides on this. But there is definitely high uncertainty going on right now.
Doug: [00:06:57] Get yourself ready invest in innovation if you’re meaningful unique that’s going to make the difference. When the economy goes tough because then you’ve got something to pull yourself through and you come out stronger is what I’ve learned. You come out stronger out the other end when you have it. Then when you don’t have when you don’t have it you struggle for some time.
Tripp: [00:07:16] So Doug what do you. What do you see when you made the comment there that you know good things are coming.
Tripp: [00:07:24] So so what what do you see. I mean why do you why would you say that. Because you know if everybody else is retreating why why is Doug. Because you have it. You have an interesting perspective anyway. But why do you say that.
Doug: [00:07:38] Well because we’ve we have spent in our case and in some some folks that we’re working with have made investments in technologies that dramatically increase speed in our case and decrease risk. I mean we’ve got a whole new project management platform that’s based for accelerating innovations that is absolutely ridiculous.
Doug: [00:08:00] In how much faster makes teams new education courses or new online courses that are just a mind leap forward. When you have something that is a point of difference and customers just sitting there and they’re struggling they’re looking for people who can help them work faster and smarter.
Doug: [00:08:19] And whether it’s software I was just just today I was looking at some software that can help us with the whiskey business with our marketing making it even more effective. Well when times are tough people are out looking for something that can help them break out of it because they don’t want to just sit there. They get to a point where you know the class then they’re mad as hell and I can’t take anymore. They’re like Well we’ve got to do something. We can’t just be a victim. I’ve got to do something. And they’re looking for things. And I think and we happen to be on the right side of the curve here in the way that we have. It’s amazing you say oh we just introduced this thing. The world doesn’t even know about it. And so with these last changes that have gone through since the first of the year we’re really set up to go do it we’ve got that portfolio and with other stuff coming that are going to just do amazing things.
Tripp: [00:09:10] Okay. Well what’s let’s just take a minute and kind of cover off you know we do want to make this a big advertising type of thing. But why. Just because we haven’t really let the audience know what are the offerings of the Eureka! Ranch and Innovation Engineering and all those types of things. Can you kind of just yeah. She’s got a big deep thing but just kind of what they are.
Doug: [00:09:31] And so you can I mean people have look online but in the simplest sense we have Eureka Inventing and we have Innovation Engineering Eureka! Inventing we find filter and fast track big ideas for you see if you want patentable breakthroughs with you reinventing we can very quickly get you some some big ideas and get you going to restart the curve and get you on the path towards profitability.
Tripp: [00:09:55] So is that does that mean that you’re kind of doing it for them.
Doug: [00:09:59] Well we’re taking the left we’re doing the heavy lifting but we’re doing it with them but we’re taking on probably 70 percent of the responsibility 70 80 percent. OK. So we’re it’s collaborative because we don’t want that invented here but it is we’re taking the heavy lifting. OK. At the and it’s a it’s a bit of a jolt if you would like to get things going.
Doug: [00:10:22] I mean we say my books have been called Jumpstart and they really are a jumpstart on the other side for most people today. Now the New Economy is gonna be different this if this happens they’re going to want that jolt then Eureka! Inventing is going to go flying because it’s it’s very fast. We compressed nine months into into it like a week. I mean it’s very very intense. And so that’s why it’s been so popular for so many years. But on the other side that gives you an idea and that’s nice for a couple ideas or a portfolio or whatever but it gets you basic some ideas what people are looking for more and more is sustainability. They’re looking for the ability to do it themselves.
Doug: [00:11:02] And so that’s where Innovation Engineering is where what we do is we teach you how to find filter and fast track big ideas. In other words we enable you to be able to do that now that you can be the organization. It can be your team or it can be an individual in their own career.
Doug: [00:11:21] So we have offerings for people for teams and for companies because sometimes the person’s ready but the team or the company is and sometimes the team’s ready but the corporation isn’t. And so if we start we work with the willing is the way we work and we’ve go online and we’ve got live and we’ve got software tools we’ve got all kinds of stuff that people can use. But the basic idea is do you need to basically get the thing turned around and get going. That’s Eureka! Inventing or you really want to bring this into your culture and do it. And that’s what Innovation Engineering is about.
Tripp: [00:11:59] OK. All right. And it’s it’s it’s primarily those two broad categories of things. You’ve got the Eureka! Inventing and then the Innovation Engineering system. And is it a natural flow then for people too. Would you say most people would then. Well I guess it would depend but would start with Eureka! Inventing and who is who is the customer for that. I mean is it somebody that they’re desperate because their revenues are starting to go down or maybe they’re they’re trying to get to the next level and they need something to happen right away. Who are the types of people that are using Eureka! Inventing today.
Doug: [00:12:36] Well when the economy is good we’re seeing a lot more invest. Now we’ve been in in a beta test so we haven’t been we’ve been very selective on who can get innovation engineering. But in general when the economy is good people are more interested in investing in the people in their systems. When the economy is bad and they need something quick they jump on Eureka Inventing got and then they’ll transition. So you’ll see both and it really depends on where it is the general people who are who will bring in Eureka! Inventing will be people who are responsible for the business. So it might be a director of marketing and might be head of our indeed it might be a new business development. It could be various stakeholders it could be the CEO. Can we bring in it it really it’s somebody who basically wants to make more money. They want to. My friend Sergio Zemin said this is some more stuff to more people for more money. And that’s that’s the primary thing that we’re doing.
Doug: [00:13:30] Although I will tell you probably 40 percent of our business now is not working on products or services but it’s on systems how to reinvent systems and so there’s a lot more work on systems because people are getting used to the fact that they got to reinvent their systems whether it’s a system for go to market whether it’s a system of operations customer service you know whatever it might remember years ago we worked on the American Express Black card this insurance card the high end 2000 dollar card. And the idea was the Card was going to sell for $2000 all throughout the rest of it so we did that and then have we did that next thing you know we had the customer service group and we ran a couple sessions with them projects to figure out how to support the people that were paying two thousand dollars for a credit card. And so it was systems work which is which is common these days. OK
Tripp: [00:14:30] It’s time now for the Driving Eureka! book excerpt with legendary inventor Doug Hall.
Tripp: [00:14:42] All right well let’s move to our second segment here. Our book excerpt I’ve been practicing saying that Doug it’s got a hard word for me to say for some reason that Driving Eureka! Book excerpt you keep on this Dickens theme in it and it looks like it as I remember from the newsletter that you’d done a speech in the UK to a marketing group of some sort. And you kind of made a joke about that and it kind of for some people laughed and most like a lead balloon.
Tripp: [00:15:22] I don’t know. It’s hard for me to imagine I still get the picture my mind from a speech I went to that you did with the baby and you said no whining you know that’s just it. It’s forever embedded in my head. But anyway.
Doug: [00:15:37] Uk Marketing Society has been very kind to me over the years I’ve done a number of different events I may be doing another one next year with them and it was their annual conference and it was December and I got up and I said it’s the best that I literally quoted Dickens I’m going to give you now more of it. From the opening segment I just figured I had to do this as a book in pair because it’s just too fun. I said it is the best of times it is the worst to time it is the age of wisdom is the age of foolishness. It is the season of light it is the season of darkness. We have everything before us. We have nothing before us. We are going direct to Heaven. We are all going direct the other way. And as you mentioned a few laughs but most hidden they think it’s the other way. And the the point here in this book excerpt from driving your ego is is that the lifecycle from monopoly to commodity used to take decades.
Doug: [00:16:33] Today because of the Internet it’s often measured in less than a year and so this is Joseph Schumpeter as creative destruction that those that don’t innovate are destroyed by those that have embraced a mindset of never ending continuous innovation.
Doug: [00:16:51] And I go on to explain in here so just to put some meat to the conversation that we just had associated with my rant we did a survey in 2011 for the US Department of Commerce now so 0 8 things go to crap and things went bad and so we went in three years later and we asked people. We asked CEOs what it was done on where they were you know versus three years before and we separated them into companies that were innovators and non innovators based on their self thing they said Are you an innovator or are you not an innovator. OK. We asked them some questions and we got that answer. And on sales growth those that were innovators from 0 8 to eleven and eleven their sales were up 84 percent versus where they were in 0 8. And non innovators rep only 4 percent profits had gone up 96 percent for innovators and only 13 percent for non innovators.
Doug: [00:18:01] So it’s not like the non-innovators days weren’t better but it was a struggling better. And then lastly employee growth innovators and increased employment by 64 percent versus plus 1 percent for 9 areas. These are primarily small and mid-sized companies so very sensitive to these kind of things. And what’s interesting is this after we did that survey we’ve done some others and whether qualitative interviews and I’ve done some quantitative interviews over in the UK and with some given companies finding very similar patterns that they did this and the most interesting thing about this is we went in deeper and asked people how much of your sales were in products or services that they didn’t offer three years before OK OK. So they’re up but I wanted to figure out why and sure enough those people that were innovators 37 percent of their sales were in products or services they did not for three years before versus 19 percent almost double. So they what had happened is they hadn’t just stayed there they had changed they didn’t sit there and whine waiting for it to come back. They changed. They did something different.
Doug: [00:19:20] And when it came to the number of customers you know we’ve talked about new customers on this podcast number of times about the whiskey testing. Make sure you go after new customers not just existing customers. And sure enough when we asked where did you get your sales from innovators. 43 percent of their sales came from new customers versus just 23 percent from non innovators.
Doug: [00:19:45] So what it says is if the economy goes bad and frankly even if it doesn’t go bad you gotta do something man. You got to get some new offerings that are meaningful unique and you’ve got to go take them to new customers. If you do that three years from now you can be twice the size you are now in profits and up 84 percent and sales growth. That’s what we’re talking about here folks grow or die. That’s what it’s about. So Tripp I really think is at the best of times the worst of times is a decision we make inside ourselves as to what are we gonna do about it.
Doug: [00:20:26] Are we going to do something or are we going to just sit there and say woe is me. I mean if there’s one thing I hate about a lot of the talking head news things is is there isn’t a lot of talk about you know optimism and what are you going to do about it. There’s a lot of blame game that goes on.
Doug: [00:20:48] Well the people that are passing the blame they got to look at themselves. Are you leading your organization. Are you leading yourself new things. Same goes for your career. Are you leading your career to new places or not.
Tripp: [00:21:04] Makes sense. I know one of the things as you’re talking there and you as you did the survey of the sales and the profit and employee growth is so what would be a trait you know. How would you how do you assess a company. In other words I mean I’m sure it’s not as clear a pile as innovators versus not innovators but you know and some it has to do with self reporting. But how would you if you went into a company what are the things that you’re looking for to see if they’re really an innovator(s) or right mindset. Because we go back to the time you admittedly said when you first started Eureka! Ranch you know they either had to have the right culture or you wouldn’t work with them. That type of thing. So. So what would some traits be of a company that innovates.
Doug: [00:21:59] Well I mean you’re right. But so here’s the difference. If I if I go back 30 40 years ago when I started the ranch it made it was you. We basically sold to people who got it. Now if we who had the culture to go do it now if we did have we’d have hope it’s because they’ve it’s gotten tough. I mean it’s just not the same. It’s just not the same. We know and so we’ve had to build systems to adapt to it. And so if I go back into the data of the kind of traits because one of the beauties is we have all of this data now over over decades and so we’ve been able to Greg Lemon at our place. Our statistician has done some amazing research on it and we found a number of things. One of the things we found is we ask people the simple question How do you spend your time. And there’s some words there but there’s basically three options one of which is proactive one of which is reactive responding to client needs and that kind of stuff versus you know doing leading and then there’s a neutral thing in between and what we do is we look at the ratio between percent in your ads 200 percent how you spend your time and we look at the ratio of time you’re spent doing proactive things versus reactive things and that is amazingly predictive of what kind of culture you’ve got when people are in a firefighting reactive mode then great things aren’t going to happen. And and so that’s a key determinant. OK.
Tripp: [00:23:43] This is the Brain Brew Whisk(e)y Academy podcast where were going to take you behind the scenes on what it takes To build a whiskey distillery business. The Eureka! Ranch team led by Doug Hall are creating a craft Whiskey Company like has never been done before.
Tripp: [00:24:06] All right. Well what’s let’s move to our segment three the Brain Brew Whiskey Academy. I think we had tossed around a few ideas before about what we might talk about here other than the craft cocktail. I think we kind of landed on that.
Tripp: [00:24:20] We wanted to do the importance of of paired comparison testing. So you’ll Why don’t you share a little bit about kind of what that is and and how you’re using it at Brain Brew and I think you both mentioned that it’s kind of a secret weapon for winning competitions. So if so how does it all fit together.
Doug: [00:24:44] Yeah if you want to win competitions folks this is the answer. I guess that’s all we’ve got to do. How to Win double golds in San Francisco and at the North American championship and get a ninety five. You know the ultimate spirit Challenge Yep this is how we do it. I’m going to tell you the secret right now. And it’s actually the secret to making amazing products or services. It’s called the parrot comparison test. So last week we talked about single product tests. We asked people how likely I’d buy it how new and different it is with paired comparison. We don’t ask in the absolute. We ask relative to another offering. So say I have two products. The simplest example is the old Pepsi challenge. For those of you who are old enough to remember that we have product P and product Q Which one do you like better. You like P or do you like you better Pepsi’s preferred over coke or whatever. That’s the same thing we do here and it is our bread and butter Take Two whiskeys set them side by side in glasses taster one which one would you be more likely to buy which one is more new and different.
Doug: [00:25:50] Same kind of way that we talked before then we’ll ask other questions you know which one is easier drinking which one tastes like it’s been aged longer which one tastes like it would be more expensive a number of other traits smoothness after taste whatever things that we want to ask and that test tells you where you’re standing up and what you’re looking to get is in our case we like to get a two to one win which means 67 percent to 33 percent so one third like this one in two thirds like us that’s the standard we’re trying to get to is is to be preferred. And usually when you start out you lose or you’re a tie you know you’re just as good as which means you’re a commodity for all intents and purposes what you want to do is then you start to do these cycles over and over again until you start to get to a win and that’s when you really learn it and this is something that no one in the damn industry does.
Doug: [00:26:43] I mean I’d think I don’t think I’ve never heard in 30 years I’ve been doing this 40 years 30 years in the spirits industry I’ve never heard of another company do a paired comparison test ever and I’ve worked with the big names never seen them never heard of them doing them and definitely not in our case where we do them in the hundreds of tests on things to optimize products and and to make it right. And you can do them overnight you do it fast quick they’re pretty easy to do you just go to some bars or different venues different places that you can do them at the distillery or brewery work or the buddy at a brewery and do over there you can do them real fast and it is amazing.
Doug: [00:27:25] And that is how our we have a product called Noble oak that we do with one of our partners with enteric and folks and it’s one all the big awards and as well as many of our others big city whiskey and others have won you know huge scores and huge rewards and it’s because instead of us saying my opinion is we run the paired comparisons we’ve run the paired comparison test to get right. And it truly is a zero. I don’t know how you do product development if you don’t have a paired comparison test.
Doug: [00:27:58] So I just I just don’t know how you can do it.
Tripp: [00:28:00] So so do this are you like let’s start with beer then I’ll go to whiskey. But you know Vin Where are you comparing it against other IPA or you just pick one IPA that you you know if you’re in that category is that we could use that kind of the way that you’re looking at it or how are you even taking the whiskey or is it you know a you know smoke smoky one versus a spice it you know how do you. So you’re comparing right.
Doug: [00:28:28] It depends on what you’re trying to do. Sometimes you’re doing it against yourself. Like the way we are products our products are getting better every time every couple of months. Our products are better. And that’s because we continue to test against ourself. Find a way to make it better and better and better. And so it’s never ending improvement. Sometimes we usually will take a product that cost twice what we are. We are you know we might you know price normally sell for about thirty five dollars. So in the whiskey business we might be taking against seventy five or 100 dollar. You know there’s a bunch of hundred dollar products that are kind of excessive from a price standpoint in my mind. I mean they’re wonderful products but they’re just expensive. And so what we want to do is to take one of those luxury products. You know we’ll take a product that’s 18 years 10 years 12 years go against our time compression stuff. That is you know I mean for all intensive purposes it’s it’s it’s you know it’s just weeks or a few months old not years old. And then compare it against that see how we do.
Tripp: [00:29:29] Ok. All right well let’s move to our Brain Brew Whiskey Academy craft spirit craft cocktail recipe and you’ve chosen the Spanish Manhattan sweet luxury something I have had one Manhattan in my life and I don’t even remember what it tastes like. So what’s the story behind the Spanish Manhattan.
Doug: [00:29:54] Well as I said in the newsletter I hope we don’t have a recession but if we’re gonna have one let’s enjoy a bit of luxury taste in the process let’s have a good time we’re doing it.
Doug: [00:30:04] So the classic Manhattan is made with bourbon rye and some sweet Vermouth. And you can do different ratios we tend to do a two to one of the whiskey to the other. And so what I found is in playing around with different things other rich things like sweet Vermouth one of the things there is this is a sherry called or heaviness or PX Sherry and you can usually get a bottle for about 30 dollars a pretty decent one and I suggest you keep it in the fridge because it’s a wine based things you want to keep it cold.
Doug: [00:30:42] Because because because it’ll it’ll oxidize on you. And the classic would be of a Manhattan style would be one ounce of PX Sherry and two ounces of a good rye. Now we have a noble oak rye or you use one of your local craft whiskeys rise as a lot of good rise out there nowadays in Rye is pretty big rye is remember is is the IPA of whiskey. It’s that’s the bigger taste. But in this case here you need it to stand up to the sherry and it’s pretty it’s a pretty amazing drink. I mean it’s really quite nice. In fact now I sometimes push it a little bit more because I like mine a little bit more whiskey forward and so on this I’ll do a half ounce of the PX Sherry in two ounces of of the noble oak Rye and I got to tell you the PX Sherry is really intense and so it just balances out take some ice in and stir it.
Doug: [00:31:37] My lucky 13 times and it’s it’s an amazing drink. It’s an amazing drink.
Doug: [00:31:42] If you want a nice sipping at the end of the night you want to sit there and have something pretty luxurious or you’ve got somebody special coming in fact as I’m thinking about this we’re going over a friend’s house on Friday night and I think I’m going to bring the PX (Sherry) with me to make for them and I’ll bring the rye with me because it is just got just incredible richness to it. And part of it is is our Rye is a huge it’s a double oak rye so it’s it’s pretty amazing to begin with but there’s a lot of good ryes out there that you can use.
Tripp: [00:32:16] So. So the taste of it is it is it sweeter tastes. Is that a how would you describe it.
Doug: [00:32:22] I mean if there are other drinks there’s a touch of sweetness to it but it’s really rich. It’s got layers and layers of flavor. I mean it’s just it washes over you with with just layers of flavor. And what happens is is the sherry with the Rye. It’s it’s rounded it’s not harsh it doesn’t bite. I mean and you know it’s put it with some good ice to it because it’s just got us the smoothness and elegance luxurious decadent. I mean these would be the kinds of words I would I would give to it it is it is not a refreshing cocktail it’s a big mind opening drink.
Tripp: [00:33:07] I will definitely have to to try that. Is there a PX Sherry that you recommend or a couple of them that you recommend.
Doug: [00:33:14] No there’s a bunch of different ones. Alvarez is what we use if you look at the show notes see a picture of it that that we use a lot but there’s others that you can use and find the one that’s like with all of the cocktails you know it’s find what you like. You know here I’m saying do a two to one and I’m also saying you know do two ounces of right half ounce of sherry I mean find what what is yours. You know this is not about following rules it’s about making what works for you.
Tripp: [00:33:41] Ok. And just just one final question before we close out this this podcast episode and maybe you should be a not maybe every time we do an episode but kind of an update on because I know you got approvals coming through in Ohio and this type of thing is kind of the state of the distillery type of thing maybe as far as kind of kind of where you’re at.
Doug: [00:34:05] Well I’ve mentioned on here before that if you want to create a distillery the number one thing you have to have is patience have to have patience because we’ve been a week from opening now four months of doing. And part of it is is the people doing permits and inspections and that there just aren’t a lot of distilleries. So it’s the first time they’re doing one and they go well maybe this thing you need to do the scene you need to do and we’ve been operating partnership with somebody else. But the good news is is that the distillery has the electric because we need a lot of electric for our time compression machine to. I mean it’s not back to the future but it’s a pretty significant amount of power we have to put in. So the electric panels are in which are ridiculous in size.
Doug: [00:34:55] The ceilings in the installations in the heating cooling in the drainage systems are in. We’ve got one inspection done we’ve got two more to come this week hopefully this week we will get our occupancy. We’re also within days from the state of Ohio. So all goes well again a week or two. Okay. It is by.
Tripp: [00:35:21] A week or two or five months whatever somewhere. Okay. That’s right.
Doug: [00:35:25] So what you have to do is just be productive at the other side and work through we’re getting bottles we got bottles on order coming in.
Doug: [00:35:36] We’ve got our labels. We got some of the labels approved. You can work TTB. You have to. You can’t do this linearly. You got to keep working all of the different parts at the same time. And that’s that’s about how you gonna do it. I mean it’s we’re close we’re close. Our big thing well for us the big thing will be the Craft Whiskey show in Minneapolis.
Doug: [00:35:57] That’s when we’re gonna open it up and we’re gonna start to get some beta testers who want to get into the ad this is a new business model to help them make more money. Oh
Tripp: [00:36:09] Good. And we’ll we’ll look forward to future episodes of finding out the trials and tribulations and the patience game that you have to play in order to build this distillery so well.
Doug: [00:36:22] And we have set a date because you have to set a date at some point. So Martin Luther King weekend on January 19 and 20 is gonna be the grand opening of the distillery. And so we will be we’ve got some bands coming we’re gonna have and will be broadcasted on Facebook Live parts of it.
Doug: [00:36:42] And we’ve got folks coming our partner from over in England is coming over. And so it should be quite a quite quite a spectacle actually. So trip you’re gonna have to come down and maybe do some interviews with people as they’re doing because we’ll be unveiling our Riverboat line of whiskeys and all of that stuff too.
Tripp: [00:37:01] So should we get. I’ll probably do that because of my wife my took my daughter’s 21st birthdays that weekend but my wife is taking her and some of her friends to Disney World for it. So I wasn’t invited.
Doug: [00:37:13] Oh wow girl time I got that. I have a guy’s time to just drink too much whiskey. I don’t know. No problem here. You’re not saying excessive. We can’t say excessive. I didn’t say that. No drinks proper about healthy whiskey. That’s the way we have to do it.
Tripp: [00:37:31] There’s only so much I can drink anyway so self regulated.
Doug: [00:37:36] We do. I do too. I I’ve just found that it’s just it’s just not fun when you drink too much. It really isn’t.
Tripp: [00:37:44] Yeah. That was only in college so.
Doug: [00:37:47] When you were stupid.
Tripp: [00:37:49] Exactly. OK.
Tripp: [00:37:51] That concludes the seventh episode of the driving Eureka podcast.
Tripp: [00:38:06] Because we appreciate you as a listener. We are offering for limited time for things. A one hour abridged audio of the driving Eureka book. A subscription to the driving Eureka newsletter which contains weekly advice from Doug Hall on how to find filter and fast track big ideas and the newsletter has other offers that are not made public. The driving Eureka prescription for success you answer questions and will help you assess your ability to find filter and fast track big ideas. And you get advice on how to grow your ability to innovate. And the last item. Access to a Doug Hall interview with a radio legend to get these offers. Go to W W.. Doug haul dot com forward slash. Podcast. And don’t forget to subscribe. To the driving Eureka podcast on iTunes.