Catholic Founders
#5 Lessons From Building a Family-Owned Catholic Beer Company w/ Trevor Alcorn (Tridentine Brewing Co.)
Today’s conversation is beer’y fun and insightful. Trevor Alcorn is one of the owners of the Twitter-Famous Tridentine Brewing Co. — Brewing beer for the greater glory of God.
They started brewing for fun in their basement. After the brand took the internet by storm, they realized there was a real demand to grow this. Recently, they made the leap to commercial production and are selling in my home state of Wisconsin.
Given they are doing something unique to the culture wars and are running this as a family business with several strong personalities, we thought it would be a great conversation to have. We were not disappointed.
In today’s discussion, we primarily cover:
* 02:27 The Tridentine Brewing Co. story
* 11:16 How they are scaling and the challenges with that
* 15:25 The dynamics of running a business with your family and Succession planning
* 18:15 Discerning the Call to Entrepreneurship
* 21:52 The Value of Side Hustles for Families
* 26:15 What it means to be a responsible consumer goods company
* 32:24 Managing lifestyle creep so that you CAN take the leap to entrepreneurship
* 40:28 His spiritual learnings from building Tridentine
* 52:12 What it means to pursue greatness as a Catholic entrepreneur
* 59:31 What Catholic entrepreneurs can do to help steer the culture towards God
Core Lesson:
Do not let lifestyle creep prevent you from answering the call to entrepreneurship.
It’s okay to create a better life for you and your family, but most of us will let our lifestyle creep up to a point that we are actually spending much more than we would if we approached spending with first principles.
Do I need to be in a neighborhood that costs $500 more per month? That’s $6,000 a year that could have gone towards savings/investing, or charity, or investing in a side business.
With Alessandro, we saw that he had a dilemma on his hands when starting Hallow. Because he had just signed a new lease in a more expensive part of town. Thankfully he had sufficient savings to go all in.
When listening to a book by near-billionaire Steve Houghton the other day, he pointed out how he and his wife ended up friends with another couple who owned a bank but still lived in a simple apartment. By living below their means, they could compound and be open to more opportunities, allowing them to make more impact on the world around them.
It comes down to deferred gratification. This is a core principle all entrepreneurs understand at the end of the day.
Until next time—God bless and happy building!
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