Delayed Gratification

I graduated Santa Fe High School 50 years ago; my greatest academic achievement. Before I did, somehow, I bought one of those little mini bottles of Hennessy Cognac VS. I had the strangest idea that I would squirrel that little bottle away and drink it for my 50^th anniversary. What 18 year-old thinks that way?

And, what does that have to do with owning a brewery? Everything.

Most likely, all of you already practice delayed gratification in some form. Maybe you are a parent who is watching your budget to save for your child’s braces or college fund. Perhaps you are training for a marathon, running every day, slowly increasing your mileage until you feel you can complete 26.2 miles. Or, maybe you put off quitting your job for another couple of years to save for opening your own business.

Amazon, of course, makes it difficult to avoid impulse purchases. Just like all the things that are always placed at the checkout counter in stores. They understand the psychology of impulse buying.

However, to open a business, unless you are super-duper rich, you need to learn priorities and start putting off the things that will not advance your goal of opening your own business. Because, if you truly want to open a brewery more than anything else, you will put off flying to another town for the weekend to see a show, and rather spend that money on a piece of equipment you will need in your brewhouse. It’s all about understanding your true priorities. You have a bigger yes for something in order to say no to others.

When we started in business, we put off paying ourselves anything more than the bare minimum we needed to pay rent and eat. We reinvested all profits into the business, either by purchasing equipment or paying off our huge loans.

Personally, Sandy and I–I’m not making this up–ate beans and rice, salad, and bought powdered milk and other crazy things like that in order to save 50% of our paychecks once we started making more than the minimum. Delayed gratification. We wanted to be debt-free. That was our goal. That was our yes.

In your new brewery, you may want that Zahm-Nagel CO2 tester, but if cash is tight, you can put it off for another year. You do what you have to do to survive. You watch literally every penny. We still have those, right?

In the book, The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas Stanley and William Danko, one of the big lessons from people who become millionaires is that they live below their means. They value freedom more than status, so achieving financial security is their long-term goal. This is a perfect example of delayed gratification. Many of the millionaires described in the book own their own companies. These aren’t large corporations, but rather businesses like septic pumping or electrical contracting. A brewery would easily fit into this category. It can be a great, profitable business that can build real wealth over time, if you can live below your means.

We were talking to friends the other night and they seem pretty well off. But they weren’t always that way. They were close to bankruptcy at one point and said that if they had gone through bankruptcy it would have been easier financially, but their moral compass wouldn’t allow that. Instead they eliminated any expenses they could and worked weekends besides their weekly work for the next ten years. They put off an easier life for a reward down the road. Ten years go by really fast, especially when you are working so much, but the payoff continues for decades.

I bring this up because I think that learning delayed gratification is one more piece of the puzzle in running your own successful business. It’s worth considering, and I’d love to hear the different stories you have of personal sacrifices for your business, or for your family or community. Or, you could simply tell me life is too short to worry about such things. Either way, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

50 years! Haven’t changed a bit.