Beer, Harvard, and a solid theology of work
Jordan Raynor sits down with Jeff Heck, Co-founder and CEO of Monday Night Brewing, to discuss C.S. Lewis’s love of beer, the phenomenal increase in productivity Jeff experienced when he went from working on multiple things to focusing on just one, and why “weekends are overrated.”
Pre-order Jordan's new book, Master of One, and enter to win a European cruise for two, dinner with Jordan in Barcelona, and a private tour of the magnificent La Sagrada Familia: https://jordanraynor.com/trip
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey everybody, welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. Hey, if you’re loving this podcast, you are really going to love my next book, Master of One, which will be released on January 21st. Hey, here’s the deal, if you pre-order the book, we have a pretty amazing incentive for you to do so. If you pre-order the book, you’re going to enter to win the trip of a lifetime for you and a friend, a friend of your choice, because you’re going to go on a seven-night European cruise on Royal Caribbean, not some crappy cruise line, right? We’re going to send you guys on a good cruise line.
You’re going to tour La Sagrada Familia, the world’s largest church, which has been under construction for more than a 100 years, and is one of my favorite stories that I tell in the book. Then you’re going to meet me for dinner in Barcelona, which maybe you don’t want to, but I really want to go to Barcelona and hang out with you. You can enter to win that amazing trip right now at jordanraynor.com after you pre-order your book.
Hey, with the book’s release coming up in just a few weeks, I thought you guys might want to hear from some of the people whose stories I told in the book. Obviously, I can’t interview Antoni Gaudi, the architect of La Sagrada Familia, but I can bring some interviews to you from some other Christian masters, whose stories I told in the book.
Today, you’re going to hear from one of my favorite sources from Master of One. He’s a guy by the name of Jeff Heck. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Monday Night Brewing in Atlanta. Monday Night is incredible. They got two locations in Atlanta. They’re opening up one in Birmingham, but they got distribution all over the southeast, some of the best beer that I’ve had in the southeast.
Jeff is super interesting. He’s a Harvard grad, moved into private equity after college, was an executive pastor at a church and he had some buddies, they were at a bible study, started brewing beer at home. It turned into a side hustle for these guys. Eventually, it’s grown into a pretty significant business. Along the way, Jeff decided to put all of his eggs in that basket of Monday Night Brewing. He’s just one of the most interesting people I know, but he also has one of the most fully-formed theologies of work I think you’ll ever hear.
This guy is running a bewery day-to-day, has this incredibly well-formed theology of work. I think you’re going to really enjoy hearing from him. Jeff and I recently sat down to talk about C.S. Lewis’s love of beer, the phenomenal increase in productivity that Jeff experienced when he went from working on multiple things, to focusing on mastering one. We talked about why as Monday Night Brewing slogan says, “Weekends are overrated.” I literally have a t-shirt from Monday Night Brewing that says, “Weekends are overrated.”
With further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Jeff Heck.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:02:59.6] JR: Jeff Heck, thanks for hanging out with me.
[0:03:01.7] JH: It’s my pleasure. Good to be here too.
[0:03:03.5] JR: Yeah, man. Yeah. It’s been a while since we talked. I mean, people don’t realize how long it takes to publish a book. We probably talked a year ago?
[0:03:10.4] JH: That sounds about right. That sounds about right.
[0:03:11.9] JR: Yeah, something like that. The book’s not even out yet. Yeah. The book’s coming out in about a month now. Hey, my team found something on your blog as we were researching for this conversation that – Yeah, I know. You should be scared. I love this line. You're talking about the founding of Monday Night. You said, “Not only are we Christians that drink and brew beer, but we plan on making a career out of it.” Do you have a good story of and don’t name names, but how y'alls love of beer has rubbed some Christians in the Bible belt the wrong way?
[0:03:45.3] JH: It's been surprising how infrequently that has happened. Usually, they don't show up to breweries or tell you, or know who you are.
[0:03:53.1] JR: They've shunned you.
[0:03:54.1] JH: Actually, one of the places where that, we bumped up against that tension has been more actually with some of our extended family who have a different perspective on alcohol than we do, who love the Lord and are believers. I think there it's just a matter of it's not something we bring up in conversation. We also don't – I don’t hide it and it's never come up as a point of tension –
[0:04:15.5] JR: That's good.
[0:04:15.7] – or anything.
[0:04:16.5] JR: Well, that's what Paul commands.
[0:04:17.9] JH: Exactly. Yeah.
[0:04:18.3] JR: That issues like this are not a point of contention. I always think of C. S. Lewis quote – I'm always I'm always encouraged by C. S. Lewis's great theology of beer. He talks about beer a lot actually. I was realizing this lately, right? My favorite is, “The sun looks down on nothing half so good as two friends talking over a pint of beer.” Do you know that one?
[0:04:37.2] JH: I don’t know that one.
[0:04:38.5] JR: Yeah, you got to put it up in Monday Night. I was at Eagle –
[0:04:41.2] JH: What’s that verse? What’s that from?
[0:04:42.3] JR: I don't know where it's from. I think it was one of his letters that Lewis wrote to one of his friends. They used to hang out at this bar in Oxford called The Eagle and Child. Have you been, by the way?
[0:04:52.6] JH: No, I haven't. The Inklings?
[0:04:54.2] JR: The Inklings. Tolkien and these guys used to hang out at The Eagle and Child, which is super cool, but by the way, has the worst beer I've ever had in my entire life. If they had only had good beer, they would have loved it all the more. I live in Tampa where we have some amazing beer, some amazing craft breweries. I'm curious, softball question to start out with, have you had Tampa beer? If so, what are some of your favorites?
[0:05:19.0] JH: Oh, man. You're going to make me put my foot in my mouth. I'm trying to remember if this was actually in Tampa or nearby, but Angry Chair. Are you familiar with Angry Chair?
[0:05:28.2] JR: I love – Okay, my favorite beer in the world is from Little Tiny Angry Chair Brewery. Do you remember what the beer was?
[0:05:36.4] JH: I probably had a – I had a flight, so I tasted four or five different ones, because they were all really great, but there was a big stout that was fantastic that I had.
[0:05:43.4] JR: There's a beer that are called Two-Pump Chump. It's like a hazelnut coffee porter. It tastes like you're drinking Nutella. It's wonderful.
[0:05:51.3] JH: You can't go wrong with Nutella.
[0:05:52.7] JR: You can’t go wrong with Nutella.
[0:05:54.1] JH: My kids are convinced that everything should have Nutella on it.
[0:05:57.7] JR: I would agree, and so with every European. The best part of Europe.
[0:06:00.6] JH: Yes, exactly. Exactly.
[0:06:02.7] JR: Hey, Jeff. So a good portion of our listeners are entrepreneurs, right? If there's one thing entrepreneurs love, it's a good founding story of a company. Monday Night Brewing has a pretty great founding story. Tell us how you guys got this thing started.
[0:06:17.4] JH: Yeah. Well, I think like any good entrepreneurial story, or a calling story, it found us. Myself and my two co-founders Joel and Jonathan, we were in a small group bible study about gosh, it's been 13 or 14 years ago. We all didn't know each other very well. There were probably 10 guys in our mid-20s getting up at 6:00 a.m. on Friday mornings to get together and talk about things of substance in our lives and the Lord. We realized we didn't know each other very well, at least certain pockets of us didn't. We thought, what better way to get to know each other than brew a little beer in the backyard?
Monday night was the night that was open. We fired up the turkey fryer and got the old home brew kit out that one of our wives had given us for Christmas and gave it a go. The first batch tasted directionally like beer, enough like beer that we did it again. Before long, we were making reasonably good beer that other people would drink. We were also making more beer than a bible study in good conscience could consume by itself.
We started inviting friends, neighbors, co-workers over to the house and it became a weekly ritual. My two co-founders and I, Joel and Jonathan, we really took the lead on organizing things and coming up with recipes and figuring out the process. We geeked out on it and loved it. We also loved the vibe that started emerging.
We got to a place after a few months where anywhere from 30 to 40 to 50 people would come by the house on a Monday night just to hang out, drink beer. Some people actually didn't even like beer that much, but they were just there for the community. I think that was the thing where we really began to fall in love with brewing and with beer. It’s not just the beer itself, but the conversations, the relationships that happened in what felt like a very safe place for these folks.
The three of us were working white-collar jobs, Jonathan as a marketing consultant, myself in private equity. Joel was an operational consultant. We had these really complementary skill sets of operations, marketing, finance and strategy. We looked at each other and said, “Let's just at least put a business plan together and see where this goes.” Four years later, in 2011 we launched the business. Jonathan quit his day job as a marketing guy and became the AR clerk, salesperson, CEO, the everything, man. It was off to the races.
About 18 months later, things were going well enough that we raised some money and built our own – built out our own facility. Joel quit his day job in 2013 when we opened. Then about three years ago in 2016, I was the last one man to fall and left my job in private equity after 10 years and have been here with them running the business day-to-day since then.
[0:08:51.8] JR: I want to get back to your story in a second and talk about the experimentation in your career, which I think is super interesting and we talk about in Master of One, in the book that's about to come out. First, I didn't realized you guys raised money. Who'd you guys raise from, if you don't mind sharing?
[0:09:05.4] JH: Yeah. Friends and family. We got closer friends and family. Yeah.
[0:09:08.9] JR: It’s how most entrepreneurs raised that.
[0:09:11.1] JH: Debt.
[0:09:11.7] JR: - first round and debt.
[0:09:12.7] JH: Lots of SBA loans.
[0:09:14.6] JR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With a predictable business like a brewery, that's to be expected. All right, you told us the story and the trajectory of Monday Night. Let's talk about you. Your story is fascinating to me. You graduate Harvard Business School, or do you go there for undergrad?
[0:09:27.7] JH: Undergrad. Yeah.
[0:09:28.9] JR: Okay. You go to your undergrad, you were in a band, we share that in common. You're trying to figure out what in the world you're going to do with your life. What were your options graduating Harvard? Then take us from graduation day, all the way until the point where you committed to Monday Night full-time.
[0:09:43.6] JH: Oh, man. All right, so my options.
[0:09:46.1] JR: Settle in. Settle in, folks. Yeah.
[0:09:48.1] JH: My options. I will say, these were the things I was kicking around in my head was trying to decide whether I should take my band on the road, go to seminary, go to medical school, or consider something in business, which I knew enough about to know that business was a thing. I grew up, my parents were both in the healthcare field, so I didn't have a lot of context for that.
I did an internship after my junior year of college in at the Home Depot here in Atlanta and where I live now. It gave me a little bit of curiosity about that. As I looked at those options, I decided I was engaged and I didn't really – the idea of being on the road full-time with trying to cut it in music and living out of the van and eating crystal all the time didn't sound particularly appealing.
[0:10:34.3] JR: Somewhat appealing.
[0:10:35.3] JH: Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe. That’s right. I can get crystal elsewhere. I think the reality was there were other things that were interesting to me. I felt music is one of those things I love. I still lead worship in my church almost every Sunday. It seemed like the thing that if you really want to do it, you have to be a 100% in. I just that wasn't convinced that was the case.
Medical school sounded like a drag. My dad is a physician. The idea of what medicine is I think was really captivated by what that profession is. It so clearly has so many ties to the gospel and to serving people and the caring for people. I just found myself didn't – I just didn't have the passion that I thought it would really take to have the perseverance to get through school and really have that sustained vision for what that looked like.
Seminary, I've I loved. I love theology. I love people, but I also had this analytical part of my brain that I felt like I really would be missing out on if I wasn't and at least didn't try something else out.
[0:11:33.1] JR: Let me pause your story there. You have all these different interests. I think we're very similar in this. We have lots of different things that we're interested in. You were looking for something to really go all-in on. As we were talking about your story for Master of One, it seemed like all throughout your career, you were looking for the culmination of all these interests and how all these things could come together in one or fewer vocational things, is that right?
[0:11:56.4] JH: That’s fair. I think the challenge was had – there was no job in the world that could possibly put all those things together. I wasn’t going to be the business guy, pastor, rock star doctor on the side. They all required a tremendous amount of commitment and a tremendous amount of – I felt I didn't know what I wanted to commit to.
For that reason, while I was interviewing for jobs on the business side, I was an absolutely horrible interview, because someone would say, “Well, tell me why you want to work here.” I'd be like, “Oh, because everything's interesting,” which is the worst answer in an interview ever that I've come to find out, now that I do interviews myself now.
[0:12:29.2] JR: Now that you hire. Right.
[0:12:30.4] JH: Right, right, right. I was a terrible interviewer. Turns out, I think the Lord used that providentially because I applied to about a 100 jobs. I had a good GPA from Harvard and at a point where the job market was reasonably good. I applied to a 100 jobs and I got a single job offer and that was to come back and work for the Home Depot in Atlanta, Georgia.
[0:12:47.8] JR: Even that role was really experimental. I love that. You were basically doing rotations through different departments, right?
[0:12:53.7] JH: Yeah, yeah. I worked at the corporate office and it was called the Business Leadership Program. I rotated through four different departments over two years. Had six months in each department and really got it – it was a great – it was actually a great fit for me, because I didn't know what I wanted to do and I got the chance to really be exposed to different areas. I spent six months in investor relations. I worked six months in a store, on the ground in Cartersville, Georgia about 30 miles north of the city of Atlanta and worked every single job in the store over the course of six months.
My wife always tells people she married the Home Depot stock boy who went to Harvard, because when we got married, I was doing my overnight shift loading, stocking shelves. Then six months in operations and then six months in mergers and acquisitions.
That really I fell in love with, because I felt it was this really unique combination of finance and analytical work and also knowing people. If you are acquiring a business, it's not just about the numbers on the page or the big picture strategy, but it's also about the human beings that are involved with it. It felt like this really cool marriage of these different parts of myself I've been, trying to understand and find a way to reconcile in my head and work out in a profession.
[0:13:59.0] JR: Your story in Master of One, actually you're mentioned a couple of times in the book. I think the longest one is in chapter five, this idea of experimentation and exploration in our careers. When you're at Home Depot, you had the opportunity to do that a lot with one company, right? As you're leaving Home Depot, you're starting to get a little bit more focused on what you think your one thing is, right? You do the M&A thing, the state in which I love how you talk about both the analytical side and the people side. It's very much a part of M&A. Then from there, you got a little bit more focused and got into private equity, right?
[0:14:29.4] JH: Yup. That's right, so in 2007.
[0:14:32.0] JR: How long did you stay in private equity?
[0:14:33.7] JH: I was there for about nine and a half years. Yeah.
[0:14:37.1] JR: Then as you’re in private equity, is this when you also started working at the church?
[0:14:41.2] JH: My wife and I were involved in planting a church on the west side of Atlanta and started right around the same time that we – that I switched over to the private equity firm. We were involved with the launch team and I was an elder there and leading worship as a volunteer for most of that at that time. It wasn't until after I left my job in private equity that I was doing some work with the church as well on staff.
[0:15:05.3] JR: You leave private equity, you're on staff at this church. Is this also when Monday Night is starting to take off?
[0:15:11.7] JH: Monday Night started, so the timeline was 2013 we opened our own facility. The business really grew very quickly. In 2016 was when I left. It had really been growing and we had gotten to the point where the business was more complex, we were hiring more people. My partners are really fantastic. Start up, get things going guys, which I can do, but I'm not as good as they are and frankly, it's not some stuff that I’m as passionate about as they are.
When we got to the how do we scale this business and how do we scale our culture, how do we think about bigger picture, strategic growth, that's when I got excited. They were like, have at it. We'd love you to come and take that off our plates. We weren't really sure if there was enough for me to do full-time at the brewery.
At the same time, the church was going through a significant growth phase. As an elder, I had the pastor is of one of my closest friends, and so we were talking and I said, “Hey, what if I split my time two days a week at the church and three days a week at the brewery, really as a part-time executive director at the church and thinking through strategy and what's next for our church and at the brewery doing similar things? What's the next phase look like?”
For about a year, maybe a year and a half, I really did that. I'd spent about three days a week at the brewery and two days a week at the church. Over the course of that time at the church, we moved up, relocated in our offices, we hired a few new people, we then bought a building and did a capital campaign.
I was really involved in a lot of that, and put some basic processes in place. We had never really had a fulsome staff meeting, for example. Just some of the basic things of management that I had learned in my time in private equity that weren't particularly hard, but added a lot of value, I think to the church in that particular phase.
[0:16:50.5] JR: You're splitting your time between Monday Night and the church, right? Which is such a fascinating set up for a conversation on faith and work. You're being stretched between these things, these things that you love, right? But feel this pull to focus on one of them. Eventually, you make the decision you're going to put all your eggs in Monday Night's basket. You're going to be solely focused vocationally on this thing. Do you regret making that decision? Maybe that's a silly question. Otherwise, you wouldn't still be doing this. Talk through that decision of how you thought about making that call.
[0:17:23.3] JH: Yeah. It's funny, I think I love both of them deeply. I'm still very, very involved with the church. It's where my closest friends and community really are. I think one of the thing – it was really a couple-fold. One was there's a lot of thought going back in weighing pros and cons. On the one hand, there were a lot of things about the same – some of the same reasons why I didn't end up going to seminary. Those were in my head a little bit.
I love the church and I love helping make the organization run better, but also I'm really mostly passionate about the – not the institutional component of the church, but the mission part of what the church is. I felt over time I was losing a little bit of steam. I think the biggest thing that happened was that as I stepped back – David Brooks writes a lot about this around the idea that the biggest decisions we make, the things that really shape our lives and our character are the commitments that we make.
A lot of times, he talked about vocational commitments and oftentimes, those things are not things we choose, but things that choose us and that happened to us. I looked around and I said, “I have two partners who have spent years investing, given up a lot of opportunity in their own careers to do this. I'm perfectly equipped, I think to give it my best, at least of the three of us to run this this business in that capacity as CEO.”
I also have investors and personal guarantees for our debt and employees who are relying on us to do things. I thought like, “I don't really have a choice.” Actually, it was in that moment that I felt a tremendous amount of freedom, rather than duty and obligation. I think sometimes we have this idea in our culture that when things become really clear that we just have to do something that that's somehow constraining, for me it's really been almost the opposite. I felt a deep sense of freedom and almost not having to make the choice, but having the choice made for me.
[0:19:07.6] JR: That's really interesting. I was talking to somebody the other day about something similar and this idea of this person we’re trying to choose between two career paths, right? We were talking about this idea of choosing the path that only you can really choose and the work that you're most uniquely suited to do. For example, I have an example of this in my career. I was running – a lot of people know I'm chairman of the board of a company, venture-backed tech startup called Threshold 360, right? I ran the business for two and a half years.
The moment I decided okay, I'm going to focus on my writing full-time instead of running this venture, part of that calculus was you know what? There are a lot of people out there who can run this business as well, if not better than I can, but nobody is raising their hand and saying, “I'll write 20 books on the topic of faith and work.” Thus ergo, and I already have this audience building behind it, I'm uniquely qualified to do that, or uniquely willing to do that job. That made the decision easy. Was that what was going through your head?
[0:20:08.0] JH: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I realized I think was that there are people who can come in and be executive director of a church. I’ve told them about, I think it was probably nine months before our new executive director started. I said, “Here. Here's where I'm where I'm leaning and I'm committed to being here and helping this transition as long as it takes.” We found a great guy, who frankly is more qualified to do the job than I was. At the same time at the brewery, it's really hard to find someone, especially in a founder-owned business, who can come in and step into that role.
[0:20:41.6] JR: Absolutely.
[0:20:42.1] JH: Yeah, for sure.
[0:20:42.8] JR: We talked about this when we sat down to talk about the book. I'm a big believer in this idea that there's a disproportionate advantage to having all of your attention on one thing at a time, right? For the sake of easy math, I know you didn't work 40 hours a week when you were doing the church and the brewery, but for the sake of easy math, let's say you're working 24 hours a week at the brewery and 16 hours at the church.
The difference in coming to Monday Night Brewing I would assume is not 16 hours, right? You're significantly more productive than what those 16 hours would account for. Did you find that to be true?
[0:21:16.4] JH: Absolutely. One of the things I found was that when I was doing both jobs that would – it was that depending on the season that we were in, what would keep me up – not keep me up in a negative way or worried, but where my mind was going to, my creative energy in those little moments of morning and evening and when you're in the shower, they were torn sometimes. Some weeks or some months they would be focused on one and some on the other. I have a really active mind and my mind is always going different places and my creative spare energy was pulled in two different directions.
I found that huge difference in being fully present here at the brewery that I think one, all my creative energy in my vocational creative energy is focused here. Second, my relationships with people have gotten a lot deeper. I have a lot more margin for figuring out and feeling out the things that are going on and learning and absorbing not just the tangible data or the numbers, but hey, how are people doing? How's the team gelling? What's the culture like? Frankly, when I was working three days a week, I didn't have the margin for that.
I had to come in and knock stuff out and get out. That added value, but it didn't add all of the value that I could really add, which I'm a very relational person. Having some margin where I can get a feel for the place and have that softer space that is a little mushy was deeply helpful.
[0:22:31.4] JR: I talk a lot about this. That whitespace mentally, the times in the shower, the times when you're doing dishes, the times when you’re in a walk, that's when real work actually happens, right?
[0:22:41.4] JH: Absolutely.
[0:22:42.4] JR: It's actually not building the spreadsheet, it's having the margin to make the creative connections between ideas for what needs to go into the spreadsheet, right? Having all your attention to one thing is really, really critical to making that happen.
In chapter 8 of Master of One, I actually used a quote of yours to wrap up the second part of the book, because I thought it was so good. I talked about one on Monday Night Brewing’s core values, fight for excellence, which I love, I love, I love. If I had a tattoo, it might be fight for excellence. Why did you guys choose to describe the pursuit of excellence as a fight?
[0:23:21.1] JH: I think because our default setting as fallen human beings is to take the easy way out and to abdicate responsibility for things, or do as much as we can in order to get the approval of other people and help us coast. It's really instead of losing yourself in the search for the truth, it becomes an exercise in and just finding, checking the box, doing the sufficient amount of work to clear the hurdle for what I'm obligated to do in this job.
For us in our culture, we wanted it to be characterized by something that was more deep-seated than that, which is a real curiosity about what's happening here and what's possible? I mean, I think a lot of it has to do actually with this theological construct of the already and the not yet, that on the one hand, we live in a fallen world so we're not yet experiencing the full consummation of what the Lord has planned for the for the world and for redemptive history. On the other hand, we have the significant ways in which it's already broken through.
I think fighting for excellence means that you're living in the middle of that tension. You're acknowledging things aren't perfect and at the same time, you're acknowledging that the Lord has gifted you in whatever role that you're in, to seek to bring about more of what the kingdom is really all about.
[0:24:38.9] JR: I love that. That's so good. Can you think of a practical example? Let's take from the last month, of how you've seen you, or your co-founders, or your team fight for excellence within the business. Help us wrap around, wrap our heads around what that looks like practically.
[0:24:54.1] JH: Yeah. We were looking actually at adding another taproom. Had an opportunity that taprooms are a significant part of our business and they help grow our brands. They help with the brand. They're good revenue streams and profit streams. We're looking at a particular site. Everything seemed to make a lot of sense on paper. Good deal, great space, good location, and so we were leaning towards it, but there are a couple of us that had some hesitations. This includes the founders in our executive team, three, four other folks.
Rather than just have a meeting, figure it out, we all got in the car, we drove two hours to this spot. We ran a bunch of pro formas, we got them to send a sales data from the business that was there before. We talked to other – we networked our way to figure out how the other breweries in that area were doing. Then we stepped back and said, “Okay, what else do we have on our plate? What's the opportunity cost?” We ended up saying that we're not going to do it.
Sometimes I think fighting for excellence means fighting your way to the conclusion whatever it might be. It also had some, I won't say fighting because it was healthy, but some very healthy tension and conflict with us to sort – because we were on different sides of the decision. One of the things we talked about is we want to be a place that's – Actually, fight for excellence for us is there are three components; it’s attention to detail, data-driven decision making and then prioritization and accountability. We look at how does this fit into the broader story of what we're, or picture of what we're trying to accomplish.
[0:26:23.6] JR: In order to fight for excellence and the things you're already committed to, it also probably requires you to say no to a lot of really good opportunities.
[0:26:29.6] JH: Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things that we do on our team is our executive team sits down once a quarter and we go through and we put everything we think we need to get done for the quarter on a big table. It's usually 25 things. The goal is among the seven of us, we’re allowed seven priorities for the quarter. We force rank them, we fight over them, we argue over them and we say, “All right, these are the seven things that we are focused on for the quarter.” There are other things that are on the list, but they're going to be de-prioritized. We're about these seven things for the next quarter.
[0:26:59.2] JR: I love that. How do you force rank those? What's the criteria you guys use to force rank those items?
[0:27:06.2] JH: We fight for an hour and a half.
[0:27:10.0] JR: It's very scientific.
[0:27:11.2] JH: Actually, what we do is we start with everyone gets Post-it notes and you write down your – you write each idea you have down. Everybody ends up having 7 to 10 notes. Then somebody will say, “Well, I have open a new tap room.” Then we say, “All right, who else has open a new tap room?” If five people say yes, we know that's a priority.
Usually, two or three of them are just really clear. Then we just debate. We really do. We get into it. We debate. We talk about what are the opportunities for the business. Then we talk about our purpose statement and our core values and say, which of these things are going to help us further our purpose statement, which is deepen human relationships over some of the best beer in the country. That serves as a filter for making those decisions as well.
[0:27:48.6] JR: I love it. We're going to get to that core mission, hopefully in this conversation. Hey first off, your Monday Night Brewing is growing super quickly, right? How are you guys maintaining those standards of excellence as the business scales? I mean, part of it's got to be being disciplined about saying no to things and taking on a few things, but what else are you guys doing to maintain those standards of excellence as the business grows?
[0:28:11.2] JH: Yeah. I mean, it starts really with people. I probably spend 50% of my time on people-related stuff; hiring, job descriptions, organizational structure, coaching, my direct reports, meetings with our team. That's a huge part of it, because we're big enough now that we're now relying on other people to carry out the vision, and so we need to make sure that they've got – we have the right people in the right seats with the right tools to do the job.
One of the things we just started doing, we just did a bit of a shift and have some new managers. I've spent probably, I don't know, 30 hours putting together a new manager training program that will roll out in October. Things like that where we're investing in people to give them the tools they need to do the job is a huge part of it.
[0:28:56.2] JR: Hiring is the most important job you do, right?
[0:28:58.3] JH: Absolutely.
[0:28:59.3] JR: Yeah. I told my team that all the time as I was running Threshold. It's like, “The most important thing you do is not go to meetings. It's hire the right people, so that you can have less meetings.” What's a typical day look like for you from, sun up, the moment you get out of bed, to the moment you go to sleep, what does your day look like?
[0:29:17.2] JH: Man, there are some things that are consistent and there are some things that all are all over the place. The consistent things, usually my son, my 10-year-old son wakes up at 6:00 on the nose, sometimes at 5:30 and comes storming into my bedroom. We’ve got four kids, 10, 9, 7 and 2 and a half. It's chaos in my house for the first couple hours of awakeness.
Then I'm usually in the office between 7 and 8. I try to get in enough so that I have some time to read, spend some time in the Lord, spent some time in scripture, spend some time reading something that's really not directly related to work. Then I usually go through our numbers. I have a set of things I'm always checking up on how – how is the business doing for 15, 20 minutes. Then it really depends.
Again, I'd say about 70% of my day is typically scheduled. I usually come in at 5:30 or 6:00 on Monday mornings and spend two hours looking at those rocks, we’re talking those big priorities for the quarter and say, “All right, what am I moving forward this week?” Then I usually schedule out my week. About 70% of my day, I usually try to schedule. That includes some big chunks of time for deeper work, or thinking, writing, etc.
[0:30:22.6] JR: Yeah, when you say scheduled out, you're not talking about meetings, you're talking about blocks of deep work, right?
[0:30:26.6] JH: That's right. I usually have about a day and a half of meetings over the course of the week, mostly on front-end of the week. I have one-on-one meetings with each of my direct reports every week. We have a hour and half for the management team every Monday morning. That gives me a little more freedom the rest of the week to have some more flexibility. Then it's really focusing on okay, where does the team need work, so I can hold those blocks to spend with them, or do some more work to support them.
Then I usually get home at around, between 5:30 and 6:00. I live five minutes away, so I have zero commute time in Atlanta, which is an enormous blessing. Then it's dinner and chaos and baths and reading and piggyback rides and tears and –
[0:31:06.7] JR: Lots of tears.
[0:31:07.9] JH: Then some time with my wife. I'd say, I usually have something in the evenings. We usually have something in the evenings two, or three days a week. We're both really involved with stuff at the church. My wife's involved with the charter school. I'm here in the city where our kids go. There's an occasional thing with the brewery as well. Yeah.
[0:31:23.9] JR: That's great. What are some habits – I’m always curious, like the habits, keys stone habits that really successful people have, that they've done for years. Not the thing you're experimenting with, but the thing that you swear by that you've been doing for two, three, four, or five years. Do you have those?
[0:31:39.6] JH: Yeah. I have a handful of them. I'm always tweaking them a little bit, but the biggest one is that Monday morning time, where I have two hours just to look at what are my priorities for this week and for the next few weeks. Usually, I try to take one full day a quarter to go off-site and do that. I think that's been deeply helpful, because I use my calendar to set my priorities. I want that to –
It's hard. It's hard. I'm not afraid to move things around and change things and reprioritize, but I need to have a default, as a more creative, all-over the place entrepreneur. I have to force myself into a some semblance of structure in order to stay focused. The other is just having some time. I tried, especially in the last several years having at least some time where I'm able to just read, or think, or journal, or write about an idea related to work. I've come to realize how that's part of my job.
After working in an Excel farm for a long time, where I’m behind a computer just cranking, cranking, cranking, the idea that it's productive for me to read and think and reflect on myself, my team, the business, where we're going, to read industry articles, to be really deep in the industry, but also in leadership and management and all these things has been a significant shift in my mindset and then how I spend my time. I probably use, spend 30 to 60 minutes a day just reading something.
[0:33:03.5] JR: Man, that's such good advice. It feels counterintuitive at first, right? I have this habit as well, where I try to have time where I'm just reading. It feels super counterintuitive. You feel really unproductive, but then you start realizing that’s some of your most productive time, because that's when you're making creative connections and finding new ideas and all those good things.
I love the Monday morning thing. I think that's interesting. It's basically your weekly review at the beginning of the week. I do a weekly review at the end of the week. I basically have all my weeks themed, right? I'll have two weeks in a row that are just focused on launching the podcast, right? Then the next three weeks will be focused on getting ready for the launch of Master of One, or whatever it is. It sounds like you do something similar. You find out what those rocks are ahead of time, maybe a quarter at a time, which is my frequency and then block it all out. Is that right?
[0:33:48.6] JH: Yeah, that's right. I usually do it Wednesday mornings. I usually have 30, 45 minutes where I can readjust, because our business moves and changes so quickly. It's interesting, probably a difference between your work and my work is that mine's really dynamic and I think that's the thing about having a system is it's got to work for you and it has to work for the context of what is your job. That's why I played around with things for so long.
[0:34:08.3] JR: Yeah. When I was running Threshold and we were growing as fast as we were, we would do that. We used OKRs, Google's OKR framework to set goals, but we would reset them every 45 days. We would set them on a quarterly basis, but get together midway, same thing you're talking about for the middle of your week, which I really like.
You mentioned your quiet time in the morning. What does it look like for you as you're reading God's word? Are you just reading straight through a passage of scripture? Are you journaling? What are your spiritual disciplines?
[0:34:35.0] JH: Yeah. I think that's probably another one. It’s just there's certain things that I have that I'd say I'd try to do consistently every day and then it just depends on the season. Right now, some of my foundational things, I think it's always good to be spending at least some time in scripture every day and some time in prayer every day. I think for me personally as a type-A overachiever, I like to think also – I want at least a significant part of my prayer time not to be just to sit and listen, rather than talk at God.
One really influential book for me and my wife has been Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero. We actually have taught the class a couple times at our church. He talks a lot about the importance of just sitting in God's presence. As someone who's an achiever and driven to achieve and perform, I need that regular assurance that that is not where my identity is found and that's not why God is pleased with me.
I think those three components of some time in scripture, some time in prayer and sometimes just sitting and being present with the Lord. I'd be lying if I said I did it every single day. Then from there, it just depends on – right now, I'm going to in a year-long group of four guys. We meet for two hours every week on Thursday mornings. We're spending an entire year in the book of Ephesians. I'm doing other reading in scripture along the way and reading a few other books and talking together.
[0:35:51.8] JR: Back to Pete's book for a second, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Are you a John Mark Comer fan by chance? Do you know John Mark Comer?
[0:35:58.3] JH: I’m not familiar.
[0:35:59.2] JR: All right. He's publishing a book. Actually it's out now. It's called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, in which he cites Emotionally Healthy Spirituality a lot. It's an exceptional book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. In fact, I'll send you a copy.
[0:36:14.1] JH: Please do. Yeah. That would be awesome.
[0:36:15.5] JR: Yeah. It's really, really, really great. Just this belief that in sitting in the presence of God and sitting in silence and just slowing down long enough to have our souls catch up to our frenetic lives.
[0:36:28.7] JH: The other spirit spikes for us that's been so significant has just been a weekly Sabbath. I think that's been a big shift for us in the last three years is then with little kids, it's hard to do. We're still figuring out, how do you take a day of rest when you have four young children around? It's been really helpful. When you have some basic rules that we followed – again, their rules that give us some sense of freedom, not constraint. That's been huge.
[0:36:54.3] JR: Life-giving rules, right?
[0:36:55.4] JH: Yeah, yeah.
[0:36:56.9] JR: We have very similar stories. We started Sabbathing every Sunday about three years ago. It's been life-changing for me. It's my favorite day of the week. I actually had the same question for you. How do you Sabbath with young kids, right? Our rules are basically – I mean, it's pretty simple, right? Do whatever is life-giving, right? Only do things that are really worshipful, really peaceful, really relaxing. We're parents of a five-year-old and a three-year-old. We're always working. Sometimes the most relaxing thing is not disciplining my children. What does a Sabbath look like for you guys?
[0:37:31.1] JH: Yeah. For us, it's typically Saturdays, because I lead worship on Sunday mornings and that we have practice in the morning. Some mornings we usually – For us, a couple things we do; one is meals. We try to prep meal. To be fair, my wife does most of that. God bless her. No dishes, no making beds, just let the house gets messy. We prepare for that by trying to get the house clean. We do actually do work to prepare to rest. That's really –
[0:37:56.3] JR: It’s really important.
[0:37:57.5] JH: Yeah, that's a big one. Then the kids watch more TV. They don't eat as well. Then I think it's letting go of that expectations of parent that this is all about me. Instead, having a posture of what is it the Lord has for me today that's different from my typical rhythm? Yeah, and some component of worship and some component of play. I mean, I think we like to play. I'll build castles with my kids down in the basement, or take the kids for a run, or bike ride. Just getting out of the house, going to the pool.
One of our pretty regular traditions is putting a kiddie pool in the driveway and having a beer sitting out on the porch while they play in the in the pool. I'll put my bathing suit on and jump around with them. It's the little things. I think that we have this expectation sometimes that Sabbath is going to be a monastery, or a theme park. I got to go to Six Flags, or a monastery. The reality is I'm learning to be content with a kiddie pool and a beer.
[0:38:51.1] JR: Yeah. Our Sabbaths are pretty simple, right? We have some traditions, like we go to our favorite donut shop in town, we have breakfast Cubans. We do that on Sunday, right? We go have breakfast Cubans, we go have our donuts and then we go to church. Yeah, the rest of the day is pretty simple, right?
We hang around the house for the most part. We might take a walk, and we share this in common, there's a beer at the end of the day. I actually reserve. I'll buy more expensive beer just for Sabbath Sunday and have a really exceptional beer at the end of the day. I love that.
[0:39:23.8] JH: One other thing we try to do is I think in the same way that the Sabbath, the Lord looked back and said it is very good is my wife and I also try to practice just a disposition of gratitude for the work that we have done and the fruit that's been born in the last week.
Even as we look ahead to the next week of trying to begin our – begin and end our week with a disposition of gratitude for what we’ve done. Sometimes in the middle of the week, we’d run around so crazy that it's helpful for us to step back and think, “Hey, this kid who's been struggling with such and such had a great week this week. Or hey, here's some great things at happened at work and celebrating and affirming God's work and having the time to recognize and then praise him for it.”
[0:40:01.9] JR: I love that. We're talking about how much we love weekends, right? One of my favorite things – In fact, I actually tried to order this shirt on MondayNightBrewing.com and it was sold out. I was so disappointed, is ‘Weekends are Overrated’. I love this. Since this is a podcast about helping Christians connect their faith with their work, share about what you guys mean by this awesome tagline, ‘Weekends are Overrated’.
[0:40:24.6] JH: Yeah. We saw I think two things, one that rubbed us the wrong way about just alcohol and the beer business, but also about people's disposition towards work was one, alcohol can be seen as an escape from something that's bad, which obviously is not how the Lord intended for us to use it. Second, that we're living for the weekend and there's so much alcohol in our broader culture that gets consumed on the weekend as an escape from the monotony, or boredom, or whatever, or the frustration of fruitless or challenging work.
We really want to try to reframe our work and our beer as something that can be enjoyed on a Monday night, which is notoriously known as the worst day of the week. I'll enjoy it on a Monday night with friends and celebrating good work. The idea was that hey, Mondays really are not that bad, because work is good and beer is good and relationships are good. That was really the origin of that.
[0:41:17.4] JR: I love that. By the way, I think we talked about this a while back, but where did you start to really get this – you have this very deep doctrine of vocation and a deep understanding of the connection between faith and work. Was it Every Good Endeavor for you that started to make that connection, or was it before that book?
[0:41:32.3] JH: Yeah. Actually, we did a – in that bible study, we did a faith and work study. I read a book called The Other Six Days about 15 years ago that was pretty impactful. Every Good Endeavor, certainly. Then there's been several others for me. One actually pretty early on it doesn't – isn't directly related, but it's called To Change the World by again, James Davison Hunter, who's at University of Virginia. The big theme that caught me there is this idea that living out our faith and our calling is about faithful presence, is the term that he used to describe it, that we want to be faithfully present in the context where we are. The big part of that is our vocation in our place.
The idea of being a brewery on the west side of Atlanta and we live on the west side of Atlanta, we get planted a church on the west side of Atlanta. My wife started a school on the west side of Atlanta. That was very deeply informed by his book. Then one of the more recent ones has been Desiring the Kingdom by James Smith, which is another fantastic one. I love reading. Generally, I'm always reading two or three things at the same time.
[0:42:30.3] JR: Yeah. Yeah. You've mentioned the mission of Monday Night Brewing. Can you articulate it again and then talk about how you've seen that mission play out, this deepening of human relationships?
[0:42:42.2] JH: Yes. Our purpose statement is that we – Monday Night Brewing exists to deepen human relationships over some of the best beer in the country. That really came about from the early days in the garage, where we saw these really different kinds of people from pastors, to attorneys, to neighbors, to some people that – we had people that come in from out of town for business and then had read our blog and came to the house and connecting over beer. What was fascinating to us was how the beer was not really the point, it was the relationships that were happening over that beer.
In the absence of something to talk about, two very different people can at least talk about how great the beer they’re drinking is, as a way to break the ice. We talk about it too in a city that is very diverse, racially, socioeconomically from where people come from, beer is this – it just takes down the walls. It’s this leveler. It's not expense. It's not wine, or it's not snobby, it's not pretentious. It's accessible and anybody can have something to say about a beer.
As we've grown, that's also translated then into a lot of business decisions. Things like how we lay out our taproom. We intentionally designed our seating in our taproom to include long picnic tables, the four strangers to sit next to each other and have conversations. We've had really, really cool things happen from couples that have had their first date and gotten married and then have their weddings here, to donating the space to non-profits for fundraising events and community efforts like neighborhood association meeting, summer association meetings. There's so many things that we can do to facilitate that and we're always trying to find ways to live that purpose out, whether it's a big business decision, or an individual relationship that a bartender is having with a guest who's coming in the door.
[0:44:18.2] JR: I love that. In Master of One, I talk about how when we are masterfully good at our craft, whatever that craft might be; entrepreneurship, writing a book, whatever, it tends to make us salt and light. We live out our calling to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It's this concept of just focusing on excellence first. By doing that, we're often winsome to the world, we're attractive, we’re given opportunities to just build relationships and sometimes share our faith explicitly. Have you guys found that to be true?
[0:44:47.2] JH: Absolutely. I mean, I think we want to have a big tent at Monday Night, where we're at an attractive place to work and visit for people of all kinds of different backgrounds and beliefs. What we try to do is how do we see the God-given beauty and individuality of every person that we come into contact with and really see them and coach them, or welcome them and use that as a foundation.
Also, I think one thing's for our team especially that I've certainly found is that when people are also challenged and called to excellence in a way that is respectful, is loving, but it also challenges and pushes them, what they found is they're typically capable of more than they thought they were. That's deeply encouraging and it opens up the new perspective on the world and your view of yourself, and it gives you I think to your point, makes you more – your life more appealing.
I think that said, there's a lot of ways in which a pursuit of excellence can force you to be blind to some things as well. I'm always really careful to check my own motives and to provide lots of channels for feedback, so that people feel comfortable raising their hands when something we're doing, or a decision we're making, or the way someone's being treated is out of line with what I want it to be, or what we say we believe. We try to also build in tools of accountability for our team.
Right now, we just launched our annual employee engagement survey and it's completely anonymous and we're at – We have a lot of questions that we ask about is Monday Night's leadership living out our core values? How well do we do that? Where do you see opportunities for us to get better? Because I think the bigger we are and the more successful we are, it also is that much easier to be blind to the places where you think you're being salt and light, but actually you can end up being a significant stumbling block, unless you have a humble disposition, which I've always try to be aware of.
[0:46:37.0] JR: Yeah. This is I think maybe the number one theme that I saw in the interviews for Master of One, was the Christians that I interviewed who are pursuing mastery, always coming back to this concept of humility, right? Humility being the defining mark of people who are really world-class at what they do. It takes humility to ask, to seek out feedback like that anonymously. It's not easy. I've read those surveys as a CEO before. They're not always great to read.
[0:47:06.3] JH: People are not gentle sometimes. Yeah.
[0:47:07.6] JR: People are not gentle at all, right? That's what experts do. Experts regularly seek out feedback from others. Kudos to you guys for doing that. Hey, let me ask you this, what are your prayers look like for the venture? Is your praying about the venture specifically? What are you asking the Lord to do?
[0:47:25.9] JH: Yeah. There's a number of different things. Certainly, one is pray for individual people who are on our team especially, but also there are a lot of prayers frankly that are for in a growing business, it's very capital-intensive. There's a lot of prayers for just stability, for the success of new things that we're launching, for clarity of leadership and vision for myself and my partners and the other leaders on our team.
Then just that we would just for the Lord to show up in through people who believe in him or not, the common grace that he has to show people a welcome, hospitable perspective and voice when they come in the door.
In our training for our bartenders, I tell the story about how at the early days in my backyard, there would be people who are there for the first time and they would walk back down the stark driveway and peek around to the garage, which was in the back of the house. They had this look on their face that said, “Am I in the right place?” Our team's job is that when you see that person, your job is to say, “Yes, you're in the right place.” That's a lot of my arrow prayer, so to speak, are help people feel they're in the right place.
Then just being at work amongst not just our team, but also amongst the people who are showing up here, because a lot of what we do – I mean, what happened in the backyard and I think what happens in our spaces, our taprooms is a lot of times, it has nothing to do with us. It has to do with the people who show up and are getting together together. Then all we're doing is just providing the space and context for them to do that.
[0:48:49.4] JR: Yeah, you're a conduit for human connection, right?
[0:48:52.2] JH: That’s right.
[0:48:52.8] JR: I love it. All right, three questions I like to end every conversation with. These are largely selfish, but what books do you gift the most? If I look to your Amazon order history, which books have you ordered over and over and over again for people?
[0:49:08.9] JH: The ones that I have given out the most have been 7 Habits, Stephen Covey.
[0:49:13.5] JR: Classic. Classic.
[0:49:15.1] JH: Recently, two others have been Radical Candor by Kim Scott, if you’re familiar with that one. I love that, because the basic premise is truth and love effectively. Then the other recently has been The Culture Code by Dan Coyle.
[0:49:28.7] JR: I haven’t read it.
[0:49:29.9] JH: Great book. I've got our whole executive team reading that one right now. He talked about the secrets of highly successful organizations. Then the last one that I recommend to my friends and folks that are in positions of authority, who are believers is Andy Crouch’s short but one lovely book, Strong and Weak.
[0:49:46.4] JR: One of my all-time favorites.
[0:49:47.5] JH: I absolutely love.
[0:49:48.8] JR: I just re-read it. It holds up. It's so good.
[0:49:51.6] JH: It's fantastic.
[0:49:52.7] JR: Is that your favorite Crouch book?
[0:49:54.0] JH: It is. Yeah.
[0:49:55.0] JR: Have you read Culture Making?
[0:49:56.3] JH: Yeah, it's been a long time.
[0:49:57.9] JR: Culture Making is exceptional. Strong and Weak is in a league of its own.
[0:50:02.4] JH: I think it just hit me at a time, in a particular season where I was wrestling with that tension between authority and vulnerability. I think for that reason, it just knocked me off my feet.
[0:50:11.5] JR: It's such a great framework and a simple framework to think about. I also like –
[0:50:14.8] JH: I love two-by-two matrixes. I mean, give me –
[0:50:17.1] JR: You’re a faith and equity guy. I mean, come on.
[0:50:18.4] JH: Oh, my gosh.
[0:50:19.0] JR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, what one person would you most like to hear talk about the intersection of their faith and their work, maybe on this podcast?
[0:50:28.7] JH: Get Jamie Smith to talk, man. I love that guy. He is fantastic.
[0:50:32.3] JR: Yeah. All right. We’ll get Jamie. Finally, what one piece of advice would you give to somebody who's pursuing mastery of the art of entrepreneurship?
[0:50:42.1] JH: I think it would actually go back to what we were talking about before, which is try to find out where your weaknesses are, be humble, ask a lot of questions, both about your work and the work you're doing and about you as a leader, as a builder, as a master of what you're doing. Just proactively seek out and fight for people to give you the hard, true feedback that's going to help you grow.
[0:51:04.7] JR: Yeah. That's where I used to in my quarterly reviews with my team at Threshold, I used to hold their feet to the fire and tell them one thing I could do, at least one thing I could do to be a better leader of the venture. I would force it to be really, really critical. It's hard to do that, right? It's hard to hear it, especially when you're sitting face-to-face with somebody, but that's what masters do, right?
[0:51:25.2] JH: That's what we have the gospel for. The gospel allows us to do that, to ask those questions and hear that feedback from a position of knowing that we are safe and secure and that the Lord is of course, going to continue to grow us and we are of course going to continue to fail, but that does not compromise his love and approval of us.
[0:51:43.8] JR: He's going to sanctify us, but our status is secure forever. I love it. What a glorious truth. Hey Jeff, I just want to commend you and Joel and Jonathan for building such an exceptional company. The products are exceptional. I've had the products. You guys are building an incredible culture. Your team seems to be incredible. The one time I was in the taproom, it was a pretty great experience.
You guys are just building a great company and serving your neighbor through the ministry of excellence. You're loving your neighbor as yourself through the ministry of excellence and glorifying a creative God that we serve, who's made all of these good things for us to enjoy. Thank you very much. Hey, next time you're in Atlanta, head over to Monday Night Brewing. You guys have two locations there in Atlanta now, right?
[0:52:26.1] JH: Two locations. Yeah.
[0:52:27.3] JR: You guys are opening one up in Birmingham?
[0:52:28.8] JH: Opening one up in Birmingham early next year.
[0:52:31.0] JR: Awesome. Next time you’re in Atlanta, go hang out at Monday Night Brewing. Jeff, thanks for being here.
[0:52:36.3] JH: Thanks so much, Jordan.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:52:38.7] JR: Hey guys, if you want to hear more of Jeff's story and the stories of other Christ-following masters like him, make sure you pre-order Master of One. Yeah, if that conversation with Jeff isn't incentive enough to get you to pre-order, how about I buy you dinner at Barcelona and send you and a friend on a European cruise? Does that sound good? Okay, cool.
Go to jordanraynor.com right now to pre-order the book and enter to win this incredible trip that we’re giving away. By the way, some of you have asked, “Jordan, you're not paying for this yourself, right? The publishers are paying for this?” No, I'm paying for this trip, okay? Because I love La Sagrada Família this much. I really want you guys to see this incredible church. Go pre-order the book, enter the sweepstakes at jordanraynor.com.
Hey, thanks for listening to Call to Mastery. Next week, we've got another great episode coming for you. I'll see you there. See you next week.
[END]