Episode 87: Bill Shufelt — Co-Founder & CEO of Athletic Brewing Company

King of the Ride

Ted King

Sports, Health & Fitness, Business

4.8 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2022

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I like beer. You like beer. Beer is great! Hangovers, poor decision making, reduced performance, and alcohol induced accidents aren't that great. Bill Shufelt had a very successful career in finance, but he found that he inspired at work. It was work for the sake of work and he wasn't making healthy decisions. He saw a void in the craft beer market, specifically for non-alcoholic beer and leapt at it. After (nearly) countless attempts, along with his business partner, John Walker, they created the genre of North American craft NA beer. The proof is in the pudding; in 2020, Athletic's Free Way IPA won the award as Supreme Champion Beer at the International Beer Challenge, the first non-alcoholic beer to win the award, beating over 500 other entries. Don't miss out on performing at your best. Go to www.therabody.com/king and check out their RecoveryAir JetBoots to be able to be at your best, wherever your day/training/travels take you.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'd printed out a map of the country and I'd put up pins all over it with my wife and I was
0:08.9	like I'm going to visit all these breweries in the next month and I'd like start to book flights
0:13.0	and rental cars and everything and every single one of them said no and like so I had no trip
0:18.9	and it was like the saddest moment and I had to like totally pivot the business plan.
0:26.1	Hi there, folks.
0:27.3	Welcome to another episode of King of the Ride podcast.
0:30.9	This is a fun one.
0:33.4	This is where beer and athletics collide.
0:35.9	This is where entrepreneurialism meets athletics.
0:39.2	And this conversation all starts in Little Middlebury, Vermont, right down the road.
0:44.1	Middlebury College is my alma mater.
0:46.7	It is also our guest, Bill Shufelt's alma mater.
0:50.5	No less, we were classmates graduating in 2005 a little while back.
0:55.7	We probably took some similar classes as we were both economics majors.
1:00.0	He took that route to Wall Street and a successful career in finance.
1:03.8	I, of course, took mine to the bicycle world tour.
1:06.9	He then took quite a detour from life burning the candle at both ends to start a little upstart called athletic brewing.
1:14.0	And quite frankly, he created the category of non-alcoholic craft beer, which even five years ago was an unheard of category.
1:23.8	And now it is a mega booming business, all of which we're going to talk about today.
1:30.2	I'll be honest. I was a naysayer. If I wanted beer, I will drink beer. Thank you very much,
1:37.6	alcohol included. However, Bill saw an unmet need. My wife likes beer, for example, but she's pregnant. Let's call
1:48.2	a spade a spade. Alcohol is delicious, but it is a performance inhibitor. So, to be at your
	...

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