Introduction

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

-Robert Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time"

Sitting in the driver's seat of my new used muscle car, paintbrush in hand, the sound of the throaty engine music to my ears, I began painting the words "Go Slowly, Go Thoughtfully" in bright-red acrylic paint on the center of my steering wheel.

Enjoy the Journey

Just before I turned 46, my grandmother Jessie passed away at the glorious age of 96. She had run a small business with her husband, Sam, and had been a great inspiration to me. As I thought about her life, I figured if my grandmother lived to the age of 96, then it was certainly reasonable to assume I could live to be, say, 92 if I started taking better care of myself, stopped stressing out so much, and stopped trying to do so many new things so quickly.

"Go slowly, go thoughtfully."

So I decided to treat my 46th birthday as my definitive midlife moment-the unofficial halfway mark of my journey along this mortal coil-and celebrate this existential milestone memorably with gusto.

I traded in my sensible used Volvo sedan for a 500-horsepower three-year-old Dodge Challenger Super Bee. This isn't just any muscle car. It's the newer iteration of my boyhood dream car that I have thought about since I was a six-year-old doodling the earlier model upon my grade school textbooks back in the late 1970s.

I bought the car on my 46th birthday and within just two months had to bring it in for service twice. The mechanic explained that the car's "big-ass engine" (mechanic's term originally, now mine as well) needed more time to warm up than normal, much smaller engines do; I couldn't just jam the car into drive and peel out.

Hence, the "go slowly" reminder. And the "go thoughtfully" part is to remind me not to check my phone for any reason while driving. To focus on the present, the task at hand, and to enjoy the journey.

This is me in my new used car wearing the road-mullet wig I keep in my car to embarrass my wife when I peel out incognito.

This reminder, to go slowly and go thoughtfully, now emblazoned on my steering wheel, has also become the mantra for the thoroughly enjoyable, illuminating, and challenging personal and vocational midlife crossroads I find myself navigating. Like my engine, I am warming up to the notion that I can't move as fast and take as many risks with myself or my company as I did a couple of decades ago when we were both much younger.

Celebrating the Epiphany

Within a few weeks of my birthday, Dogfish Head celebrated a milestone as well: our 20th anniversary as the first brewpub in the first state. I figured if I were going to treat 46 as a halfway point in my personal life, it would also make sense (at least to me) to treat the 20th anniversary of the company I founded as the halfway mark of my role within this company. Thus, I reasoned, Dogfish Head would be the only company I would ever work for. Why? Because I love what I do and I love the people I have gotten to know as coworkers and beer lovers throughout the two decades of my entrepreneurial journey. But I also realized that to be the most beneficial to the company, my role at Dogfish Head over the next 20 years needed to be different than the type of work I did during the first 20 years. In a word, I needed to evolve. The work priorities and habits I had relied on in those first 20 years could not sustainably remain the same for the next 20.

To commemorate, capture, and internalize this epiphany, I got a tattoo.

Joining the Fans

Like the famous line spoken by Blanche DuBois in the play A Streetcar Named Desire, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. At the heart of Dogfish Head's exploration of goodness is our off-centered version of the golden rule-always aspire to do for others as you would want others to do for you. With the help of hundreds of amazing, talented coworkers past and present, we have succeeded in building a company focused on producing the types of beers, spirits, food, events, and spaces that we envisioned other creative, adventurous, rebellious people would want to experience, engage with, and rally around.

Just one of the Dogfish Head tattoos fans have shown me throughout the years.

And rally they have. Dogfish started out as the smallest brewing
operation in America and is now the 13th largest craft brewery out of over 4,000. Through the years I have met, personally thanked, and high-fived tens of thousands of hardcore Dogfish fans who have acted as our evangelists, introducing their friends to our beers and helping us grow. Some of these evangelists are so passionate about Dogfish Head that they literally bled for us, tattooing various regions of their bodies with our brand to make it part of their permanent selves.

When people would show me their tats or ask to take photos with me as they flashed their tattoos to the camera, I felt both pride and gratitude. Over time, though, as I met more and more of these bold and inked Dogfish evangelists, a third emotion would creep in-guilt.

If these people cared enough about what Dogfish stands for to literally brand themselves, the least I could do was to join them in solidarity. After all, I first sketched the Dogfish shark-and-broken-shield logo nearly 22 years ago when writing my business plan, and I have been thinking about it and obsessing about its place in the world pretty much every day since.

So now I am a 46-year-old entrepreneur with a new tattoo and a used muscle car who sometimes peels out at stop signs but doesn't break speed limits as often as he used to when he drove the more sensible Volvo. To her immense credit, my erratic driving habits embarrass my wife, Mariah, more than the muscle car or the tattoo. I have taken to wearing a mullet wig on the rare occasions she accompanies me in my car, under the pretense that I think she might be less mortified if pedestrians and other drivers in our small town don't recognize that the crazy driver she is riding with is her husband. It goes without saying that Mariah's sense of humor and patience with my shenanigans, starting when we began dating in high school in the mid-eighties, remains unflappable.

Admittedly my tat is less ornate and bold than some others I've admired, but it's pretty much identical to the sketch I first drew 22 years ago. "But it's facing the wrong way," I can almost hear you saying, if you are familiar with our logo. Nope. The image of my tattoo did not get reversed in the design phase of this book. I purposely decided to have the shark in the shield face outward on my forearm instead of inward, as it would were it a faithful representation of our company logo.

Proceed Slowly, Go Thoughtfully

So . . . this is how getting a tattoo, the second notable moment in my most-excellent-midlife-crossroads, ties so directly to the first notable moment of buying that used muscle car. To use a vehicular analogy, when Dogfish opened we were sorta like a 50cc dirt bike-simple, nimble, thrilling, and powered by a very small engine. Instead of horsepower, we originally ran on about 20 manpower if you consider our payroll the year we opened. We could bet the farm at every turn and make split-second spontaneous decisions and whimsical choices. We could all keep aware and in tune with each change of direction because all of us experienced these zigs and zags together in the same single building, the brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, where we brewed and sold our beers and cooked and sold our food.

Here is my tat.

You can risk a lot more when you have very little in totality to put at risk.

Today this company, which began pretty much as my company out of my imagination, has grown into our company-230 of us and counting. And our company needs to run a lot more like a very powerful, very intricate muscle car than a frisky little dirt bike.

We need to grow more slowly. And we need to go more thoughtfully.

In the last few years, we have prioritized strong growth over fast growth. We have embraced this strategy in order to carefully expand all the key components of our company in harmony: personnel, equipment, and resources. Going slowly still means going forward. Going forward means growing. And growing thoughtfully means a shift in thinking and acting at Dogfish that needs to begin with me.

It begins with me but it takes a village. This is not my leadership book. The biggest reason our company has been successful is because we have created a community of coworkers that champions strong leadership coming from many talented people within our organization. This is their book as much as it is mine; I am just telling our story. Of course, it is from my perspective, but I am hopeful that the respect I have for each of their perspectives and inputs on our journey comes through. As the leaders of Dogfish Head, over the course of 20 years, we have mostly been aligned on where the company is heading and how we will get there. Mostly, but not always.

I used to thrill in taking unplanned risks, abruptly zigging the...