 Hi, Jeff Frick here with the Q. We are on the ground at Gordon Beers Brewery in San Jose, California, and we're joining this segment by Dan Gordon, founder of Gordon Beers. You may have guessed that by name. Dan, thanks for having us down. Pleasure to be here. So I saw Dan speak a couple weeks back and really some fascinating things about his story that I wanted to follow up, but I thought we're curious. The first one was really, you know, you were very specific, mentioned over and over of the German Purity Laws and how you really stick to those. Yet, we're here in the middle of Silicon Valley. You've had this company going for a while, so and we're surrounded by a whole bunch of technology and innovation here. So talk about how do you combine those two and marry them to be successful? Well, it's old-school traditions combined with modern technology and that enables us to execute and create consistency and excellence the way they had hoped they could have done it in back in the 1800s. So it's really more execution of the goal versus the kind of the underlying recipe you will. Absolutely, but still with the same underlying rules of only using four ingredients, malt, hops, water, and yeast to make the purest beer. It's great. So another thing that you mentioned that I thought was pretty interesting was, you know, big things that influenced your life and who you are today. And two of them that you mentioned, the first one was really going to Germany and spending a semester abroad. So I wonder if you could talk specifically about, you know, kind of how you made that decision and looking back at it, how important was that decision? Well, I always wanted to study abroad. My parents were kind enough to take us to Europe a few times when I was in high school, and I loved German beer even at the age of 15 under parental supervision, of course. And I said, OK, I wanted to go study someplace. And I took German classes when I was an undergrad at Cal. And then with the intent of going, doing the junior abroad, and luckily I was able to capitalize on some exposure I had, thumbing through a catalog of all the different fields of study at the German university system and saw brewing engineering and beverage technology. And I said, bingo, that's what I was put on earth to do. So keep an eye out of that for all those aspiring people looking for a major, right? That's about it. Yes. Go to Germany, get a brewery. It's just you connect the two dots there. Perfect. So the other thing that you mentioned I thought was pretty interesting was really your experience at Cal being on the crew team. We're often referred to as ESPN attack. We cover a lot of tech events. We're huge sports fans. But you mentioned, you know, that being part of that team really had a big influence on you. And I wish you could dive into that a little bit more. I think the entrepreneurial aspect of being a rower and the discipline involved with with rowing and the fact that their minimal amount of rewards and a ton of work that goes into it is going to put you in a good position to succeed in life as a whole. And applying that to the discipline that I had from rowing and becoming an entrepreneur, I think we're instrumental. So the other funny thing you mentioned was as simple as the four ingredients I make beer. There's a whole lot of heavy duty science that goes in behind the scenes and we're surrounded by beakers and microscopes and all kinds of things. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that works out. It's a very simple formula. And yet the science behind it is not simple at all. There's a lot of biochemistry that goes into brewing and starts off biochemistry and I say microbiology of the two foundation scientific disciplines that are involved in brewing. From the time that you're harvesting the barley to creating it into malt, which involves harnessing the power of enzymes that are naturally occurring in the malted barley to the yeast as our most important employee and creating the flavor profiles that are signature to German style beers. All of that ties in very into a complex network of science that we apply towards maintaining consistency and adapting and creating the real high level of consistency and flavor profiles that we need in brewing. So were you already a science guy or did the beer drag you in? I was a geeky science guy. I went to Homestead High School and we had amazing physics and math science background there. The teachers were incredible. A lot of Stanford and Cal instructors that were doing a labor of love by teaching there and was very fortunate to have an exceptional background starting at that and early age. Give a little shout out to the Mustang. Some of the other great Mustang alums from that era. Gotangs, you know, yeah. I'm probably number four in the hierarchy of of the success factors for the for the people there. Jobs and Wasniac. I think our leapfrogs, you know, ahead of us and as far as success goes, right? And who's number three? Bob's Golf. So the other thing that you mentioned, what I saw a few weeks ago is really the impact of the law. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't necessarily maybe think about laws to the degrees that they that they should. And it was actually a change in the law you mentioned that enabled Gordon Bierce to exist as a brew pub in the first place. Right. And then it was a change in another law that then took away that opportunity. So it was interesting. 1984, when I was in grad school, the laws enabled brewery restaurants to come into existence that basically bypassed the three tier system of manufacturer to distributor to retailer to consumer. So those are the three pathways that are generally required. And the law change in 84 to allow a brewery restaurant to sell directly to the consumer and the over the counter more or less in the form of draft beer. And that was enabled us to build our first brewery restaurant Palo Alto back in 1987, open up in 1988. And then subsequently, they the distributor's lobby to change the laws again, to allow hard liquor to be served in the same time they limited the number of brewery restaurants that you could own. So we ended up getting throttled back and split the company into two. So you've been at it for a while now. So if when you go to Cal, I'm sure they have you over there quite a bit. And you look out over the young entrepreneurs, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, what are some of the tips and advice you give to the guys? Well, number one, whenever I'm speaking to to business school students and entrepreneurship students is primarily got to get hands on experience. It's amazing how naive the youth of America is and thinking they can grab and just jump into a venture without having done any homework and any due diligence as far as getting hands on experience. So that's number one. And they're all drinking beer. So they got that. Yeah, everyone's a beer expert, right? At the age of 16, you're a beer expert these days. That's it just getting hands on experience. Number one, yeah, the rest of it will come. I mean, you either have the ability to be an entrepreneur and you can handle the risk stress and the risk factors, or you can't. I mean, you're going to have to be bred for that part. You can learn it and both most entrepreneurs are risk takers, but at the same time, they're calculated risk takers and try to prepare for battle as best you can. So getting that experience is number one. And I think that's the oversight and getting cross training and accounting and basic business expertise is also important. What about the passion? Did the passion was it there? Did it come? Can you do it without passion? Can you develop the passion? Clearly, there's two things that you have to be to be successful. And that's passion, authenticity. Without those two, you're not going to be able. Those are the buzzwords at every business school. You can't be half fast. So Dan, thanks for coming on. Any final thoughts before we sign out here? We're going to go over to the tasting room. It's five o'clock somewhere. We have a lot of tuition payments in the Gordon family, so please drink a lot of Gordon beers, Bear. All right, great. So again, Jeff Rick here on the ground with Dan Gordon. We're in downtown San Jose at the Gordon beers brewery. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching.