Billy Busch - Anheuser-Busch Heir | The Dark Side of Building a Family Empire

I was so busy living the dream and living what our family was doing that I really didn't realize the impact of what was going on around me. Took me years to realize that. What does it take to survive over three decades in one of the most cut-throat industries in America? Bill Bush has coached at some of the biggest programs in college football. Ohio State, LSU, Wisconsin, and Nebraska. Yet he's remained one of the most humble, hardworking minds in the game. Living with the elephants was one of the highlights of my life and still is today. They would remember me because they it's true what they say they have a very large brain and they never forget. My dad should have made it more black and white on how to leave grants farm. If you don't, it creates a lot of infighting. Now my brother and sisters unfortunately and myself don't talk to each other anymore. From a small town kid in Pender, Nebraska to winning a college football national championship with LSU in 2019, Bush's story is one of grit, reinvention, and relentless belief. If you're a money person make sure you have a great marketing person. If you're a top line thinker then we'll make sure you have a good numbers person. Biggest success in life is if your kids want to come and be with you once they grow up. In this episode we dive into the mindset behind surviving the coaching carousel lessons from coaching legends and elite programs. This is about how to lead, adapt, and rise again. You're going to learn a lot more from your failures than you are from your wins. Always have faith in yourself to never lose that faith. Believe that God is out there and that with God you can do anything. Welcome to success story. I'm your host Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast never but HubSpot doesn't just have great podcasts. 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Louis to uh Tampa, Florida where the cardinals um which we owned the baseball team my dad bought the cardinal baseball team back in 1953 to promote the products from that from anizer bush it was an ingenious marketing ploy that he came up with because everybody drinks beer of baseball games right yep oh it was um you know to to to ride the railroad car down there and then later on we had the private planes to go back and forth on and um you know to see some of the parties that my mom and dad hosted were amazing and some of the dignitaries and some of the celebrities that came through grants farm like you old Brenner and um and before my time Harry Truman but uh you know uh uh mom and dad were good friends with Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson and um you know so many others that I could go on and on Frank Sinatra was at our house several times because he was he was used as a uh marketer for for the products too um much like they used today um the people in uh to market uh products on social media wouldn't call celebrities influencers yeah influencers exactly and um so you know it was just it was a great time to see all that to watch what was going on and uh to learn to learn so much and then to be around the friends that I had a grants farm and like I said all the employees um was a lot of fun I learned how to chew tobacco come on I mean you can learn how actually as a kid you're doing something that that was a different time that was a different that was definitely a different time Scott Beverly you've um you joked before that most kids bleed blood but you bleed beer and I love that that's that's a great line why did you start to realize what was the age when you started to realize that your family was very different than other people's families it's unbelievable I didn't realize it for years because I was so busy living living the dream and living what our family was doing what our family was all about that I really didn't realize the impact of what was going on around me honestly and um what my forefathers had built and where it was going the direction my dad was taking it in during my dad's tenure as head of the brewery it was the greatest growth of anisour bush they went from three million barrels and sales to 35 or 40 million barrels and sales so it jumped incredibly he built eight new breweries around the United States and put the theme parks like bush gardens around him he opened up our home grants farm to the public to promote the beer and there were so many things going on we had the cardinal baseball team but you know it was um it was something that really it was it just came natural because we lived it day in and day out as kids um of our father and mother and uh you know we had to work on grants farm and we had to keep that wonderful image of quality um intact when we were at grants farm to make sure everything was always beautiful there so when the public would come through they would see the beauty and the cleanliness of everything and that would then of course uh be part of what anisour bush and the products were all about the quality of of the products do you feel like as as a kid um did you feel like you wanted to work I mean because so you had your you had your lineage and you had your forefathers that obviously built this and then your father was running it for a period of time did you feel as a kid there was pressure for you to sort of follow in their footsteps and to and to take up this this that's a family business in quotes because obviously it's an enormous business but it is a family business when you're a kid at this point you know I have um my dad had 11 kids and I was one of six five boys excuse me and um and we had I had two three older brothers one older half brother and then two older full brothers and um I knew that you know if as far as running the brewery and becoming a big major player at the brewery would be kind of a long shot for me because um usually the oldest the yeah the oldest that went to the succession so I was looking at other things to do you know I was I was involved um in in the horses and and um and growing up on the farm and I really love farming and I wanted to you know possibly be a rancher or farmer um because I love the outdoors and you know being in the brewing business um wasn't that important to me but then later on in life um we realized I realized that um you know we might not have avenue in the in the manufacturing part of the business and then I was a bush itself but we might be able to do something in the distribution part of the business and own a distributorship so that's what we did we got into the distributorship business and I lived down in use in Texas or where we had our own distributorship and worked that um and worked that business and enjoyed the heck out of that so um yeah as far as bleeding blood in the in the in the business um you know I was on the entertainment side with Graham's farm and being a part of that and keeping Graham's farm looking beautiful and doing the shows out there and the different things that I did and then I was in the distribution side of the business uh learning the distribution um distributing going out and meeting with retailers and suppliers and people like that and that was always fun and um you know I guess it was not until I was like oh I don't know um I had this wonderful polo career with uh with my brother and we won pretty much every major tournament in the United States and we were the Bud Light polo team excuse me and uh listen this is all about family so you can't have a podcast if you're out and find my daughter and thank you so we uh we I was so much fun so I was in the polo you know and horses and what I grew up with and and um and then when I was about 40 years old or something like that and the kind of my my best playing polo was waning and I was starting to um you know kind of come down instead of going up any longer and um as a polo athlete um I started really realizing how interesting the business was and I read this book it was called it was called making friends as our business because that was a big slogan that and I was robust used that I think my grandfather um came up with making friends as our business and um they wrote a book and I read the book and I was completely amazed by my great grandfather and how he started the business and then how it was passed down to my grandfather who loved the outdoors and I'm so much like him because he didn't really even want to be in the brewing business he he wanted to be a rancher and I tell the story about how his father sent him out to New Mexico to be a rancher um although he really wanted him because he was very competent and very capable to be in the to be the successor of anizer bush he said go out learn uh be the uh rancher that you want to be and it didn't take long it took maybe six months to a year he came back home and said you know what I don't necessarily want to be a rancher I'd like to be more involved in the brewery and then he took over the brewery from my uh great grandfather and it's just very very interesting how it was all passed down and I loved I loved how they grew the business the heart and soul they put into it and how family was so incredibly important to them and how a dolphins and lily teamed together to grow the business and then how my grandfather August Sr and his wife Alice were together and they worked the business together and they those two took anizer bush shrew the hardest years of anizer bush's history and that was during prohibition 13 years where they couldn't sell alcohol 1920 to 1933 and they kept all the employees over 2000 employees employed during that time because my grandfather and grandmother cared so much about the employees and their well-being that they looked for every possible thing they could do and the innovation they could come up with in order to keep the anizer bush going during that difficult time which they were able to do and then of course you know when they came out of prohibition they were one of the very few breweries that were left standing and you know it took off because he kept going but it did take a toll on his life August Sr my grandfather and he ended up committing suicide in 1934 because he was so sick from all the stress of keeping anizer bush going through that 13 years but it's just incredible what I read and what I learned and then my father he left me all these he left all these notes and relics from the past and even notes from some of his mistresses he was a he was a very gregarious guy he was he had a lot of fun in life he kind of naughty at times I will say but he loved to keep all his notes and my wife and shooting my wife and I were able to go through boxes and boxes of notes and that's how I was able to put the book family reigns together and talk about the history of Grand's Farm and talk about it from a true perspective of a bush descendant and a bush has never published a book about the family before so this is the first one out there there have been books published about us but none of them right from the heart of the family so I think this is much more authentic than anything anything out there I think it's if it's coming from if it's coming from you I think it it is very authentic but it was stuff that you collected after so this was not so even some of the stuff you learned about your family now I'm just realizing you didn't you didn't know all of this stuff firsthand this wasn't your father telling you all of these stories there's some of the stuff that you discovered later on in life that's exactly right Scott my dad and I you know when my when I was born my dad was 60 years old he was married to a third wife he had seven kids from my mom Trudy and she came from Switzerland they met over in Switzerland and he brought her back to the United States and he was 28 years older than her and when I was born he was 60 so when I got to be older and then interested in the history of what was going on my dad was now later on in his years and he really never talked about it that much so I didn't get a lot's first hand from him I got it more first hand from the notes that he left and from the books that I read and and that's how I learned so much about our history and about our family and and how it got going and you know again it's a to build a dynasty the way my family did I'm very proud of it lasted five generations in our family most most family businesses last three generations so excuse me we made it for five generations and the work and the fortitude and the innovation that had to go in and determination I want to mention that had to go into building this dynasty and revolutionizing the beer industry was just really really incredible and it's the thing of the past and you just don't you know it's a part of history and I don't think it should be forgotten and that's why I wrote the book and I want my kids I guess seven kids and I want them to know about it no it's a beautiful story and and you're right it is it is a piece of history that shouldn't be forgotten and I think that well I'll ask you I'm curious you you you have an opinion as to why your dad didn't speak about it as much I'm sure there's trauma there's stress there's things that happened in in the history of the family that that if you've lived through them they're not things that you really feel like chatting about with your kids but was there a particular reason something that you can sort of pin down as to why he didn't want to speak about it sort of tell you all these stories firsthand you know when when I was growing out as a youngster he ran the brewery till 1974 where he was basically kicked out by his oldest son of that position of running the brewery and I talk about that that story in the in the book and he was so busy with the brewery he'd come home late every day when he wasn't traveling he'd come home late every day he'd have a couple drinks and you know have dinner with my mom we'd all sit at the table he'd talk a little bit about what went on during that day he'd ask us us kids about how grants farm is doing how are the animals are and the different animals that we had on grants farm you talk about those he really didn't talk too much he eat about the history he was so busy with with Aniser Bush and what was going on at that time that he didn't go back in history too much he would once in a while talk about how his father and how his grandfather always cared so much about quality I remember one time he came home from the brewery and he had a test tube bottle of hops one had the natural flower hop and the other one was made of a synthetic hop now this the synthetic hop when I looked at it as a kid I looked terrible it looked like mud in a test tube and the flower in the in the other test tube looked much more appetizing and he said this is what our competitors are going to they're going to this synthetic hop because it makes it cheaper to make the beer to brew the beer than than the real hop he said but you know my dad and my grandfather would never would never cut corners it would never skimp on quality they would always do the right thing and one day the public will realize what you know how how we stick to our guns when it comes to quality and he couldn't have been more right it that's exactly what happened and he kept the real hop a lot of the other companies went to the synthetic hop and it was a downfall of several other companies that for doing that and it's what made Budweiser the king of beers so again he was very busy he talked a little bit about certain things but for the most part and then he got older I think he went through some trauma he he lost our little sister was killed in a car accident his his his oldest son kicked him out of the brewery which was a traumatic thing for him he got divorced from my mom and now he was getting on later in years and he just you know as he got older and he got remarried again to a fourth wife we still taught yeah dad was something we still talked but we never really talked about the history and part of that's on me I will say I think back to it and I should have sat down with them and said dad what was your father like what was it like when you used to go to the brewery with your dad and he would have told me stories that I read because I looked at the notes and his letters that him and his father would send to each other and it would have showed me that you know what his dad took him through every facet every part department of the of Anheuser Bush and taught him each department and how each department worked and he had to learn from the bottom up and that's what dad did he basically went to the school University of Budweiser to learn the business and that's what made him such a great leader at Anheuser Bush but yeah it took me years to realize that a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring 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things that obviously is the transition of power away from your father that was very stressful there was a battle over grants farm as well and that was stressful for the family if you think about all these events and you can you can touch on even link you like a little bit of context as to what these stories mean and what happened but what did these events teach you about family business or how did these events sort of shape your perception of family business well I did learn a lot from it I will say I think in any family business I think when you when you go to pass the baton to the next generation the leader of that company they really need to do everything black and white I think I think my father I think he it was time he had lost his his oldest daughter or excuse me his youngest daughter and that was very traumatizing to and he wasn't making the the greatest decisions any longer not that it was right for my half brother to form a coup in the board and have him removed from his position because I don't think that was right but I think there would have been a much better way to go to my father our father and say hey this is it is getting too hard on you and you need to step back and allow me to run things now or something along those lines and I think you know every business owner should realize that at one of time when their time's up and they should pass it on and they should you know write up the documents make it very black and white say this is how it is is you know when you do that that kind of stuff you keep the lawyers out of it you don't have as much argument going on everybody's not going to be as happy but at least there won't be any infighting and so when it comes to those kinds of things definitely it's like he left his grants farm he left myself and my five siblings grants farm and and we we there came a time where it was in a trust and we knew we had to take it out of the trust because each of our families were getting bigger and there were more and more successors because we're all having kids and we're all married and we needed to make sure that okay what are we going to do with the grants farm it can't stay in a trust all the time it eventually needs to be bought out so my father and his will he put in there that he would his biggest wish was to see one or more of his kids buy grants farm out of the trust from whoever didn't want to stay in so I offered to buy grants farm because I was the only one in the beer business at the time I had a beer company I felt like it would be similar to what dad did my father did with the breweries that he built he built breweries and he put theme parks around those breweries to attract people kind of like an overgrown craft brewery is today you know you get to go there and have food but here you got to go not only have food and try the products but also visit all the all the incredible animals and do the rides and all those sorts of things so I thought it would be a great way to promote our company a great way to promote our beer so I offered to buy grants farm and then you know jealousy comes in and and the one one of the quotes from a sister was there should not be one one one lord of the manner something like that and you know we didn't follow dad's wish at that time so my family wanted to sell it to another entity and not one of us and we got into a big argument over that talk about it about it in the book almost had the play spot but then at the last minute well actually after the last minute happened because our trustee at the time which was Wells Fargo gave a deadline that whoever makes the final offer by five o'clock at PM on a certain day if we don't get a counter offer that person would own grants farm so I made the final offer the counter offer came about two or three hours later from my other siblings four of my siblings and another relative and they ended up bidding higher going to a place I couldn't go to so they ended up buying my brother and I out so I'm no longer a part of grants farm you know I miss it it was like it was where I grew up but but again you know um my dad should have made it more specific and made it more black and white on how to leave grants farm to a family member or what he exactly wanted to do with it because if you don't it creates a lot of infighting and now my brother and sisters unfortunately and myself don't talk to each other anymore even still even still yep that's so silly it's so stupid to it's so stupid like uh I guess I like listen a lot of people that listen to this are are probably first generation entrepreneurs they built the business now they're trying to figure out what to do with that business and I and I hear a lot of this this is going to be this huge transition of wealth because people are all retiring and they don't know what to do about succession planning and this is the perfect example obviously at a much larger scale in a first generation entrepreneur but there are people that build businesses that they don't sell and they want to pass them over to their kids and I don't know how much energy or thought they put into it before it's time and I think that's going to come around and bite them in the ass and I also don't think they think about what are the implications of the relationships between siblings they're thinking about what happens to me when I want to retire but kind of like your example that you just mentioned you've actually broken up family bond now because of this not only just not only just uh you know the the fact that your dad didn't make it clear or whatnot but now between you and your brothers and sisters you don't have the bond that you should have oh you're 100% right Scott and that's why I urge any business owner family business to make sure that when they do go pass it down my family always pass it down to the most competent child it might not have been the the the oldest although for the most part it did work out to be the oldest of the of the children oldest male and and and and it worked out great for three generations and then when I went to the fourth generation it all changed and the irony of it is the fourth generation took it basically took it from the third generation and then the fourth generation basically lost the whole company because that I really do think that that line of succession was broken um the way to the way to properly probably succeed and it went then to the fifth generation and the person that took it over which would be my nephew was not unfortunately competent because he had substance abuse problems and he was still given the control of anizer bush and an outside competitor in bev saw that it wasn't being run correctly saw the problems that anizer bush was going through and they realized it was a perfect time to take it over which they did in 2008 so where does that leave you in in your life I mean you've done a lot so we can talk a little bit about your journey but all this is leading up to okay so how is Billy going to architect his life now because right now your nephew is running the company uh always that he's not he's not you know right man sorry uh uh historically when when your nephew is running the company you weren't thinking I'm going to step in line for succession he's the one running it um and you probably saw the decline and you probably saw where it was going and then the in-bed acquisition yeah it was unfortunate but it probably wasn't a surprise to you at least because you saw what was happening I saw what was happening I was getting feedback I really didn't have a lot to do with anizer bush at that point um I was still we still had the polo team we were playing um the professional polo from the bud light polo team and um uh but I was hearing from people at the breweries some of the of the higher up executives at the brewery that there were problems going on that um he was having difficulties um talking to people making speeches, wholesaler conferences things like that that he was um he was not competent any longer to even make a speech and uh and then and then I then when I heard that he opened up the distribution system here in America to an outside company somebody came to me and said that's exactly what this company was looking for it was in bed and so now they were selling Stella R. Twa and Bex and some of the other beers and in-bed was making in the United States through the anizer bush wholesaler system and it gave them uh in bed the opportunity to look at the books look at anizer bushes books and figure out a way to buy it so yeah so I I I did see I could see it was coming I was hearing from the executives about what was going on and um you know I still thought it would be a incredibly tremendous tremendous feat to be able to take over the biggest company the biggest beer company in the world but no longer it was andizer bush the biggest beer company because in-bed had formed with other breweries and they actually became um internationally the biggest brewery in the world um and so they were able to swallow the smaller fish at that point and that's exactly what they did and um as soon as that happened I started thinking okay you know what how do I keep this tradition alive after reading everything that I read and this is during the time I was really getting involved into understanding the history of of our family my life where I've been leaving some of that to my kids so they knew it was running through their blood and to understand um where they came from and actually it was good for me too it was very therapeutic for me to be able to understand where I came from and I I just felt this desire to keep that beer tradition going because I thought about my great-grandfather and the love he had for his family and for his wife and and for all the people that worked at thatizer bush and how are you revolutionized the beer industry with pasteurization and refrigeration and how he grew his product and how he how he even came up with the recipe for Budweiser and I know you read that in the book Scott and that's one of the great stories that I love is how he went to Germany and came up with the recipe um and then I think about my grandfather about how he takes it over kind of unwillingly at first but then willingly when he realized that he wanted to be in the brewing industry and not so much a rancher any longer and how he worked his tail off and um through love and through determination and grit he um he kept the company going through that 13 years of prohibition and how it affected him after prohibition negatively and um he took his life because of that and then how my dad and his brother kept it going and how it became a household name and um the Patriots that my father and my who was a colonel in the army during World War II and um the Patriot that my uncle Adolphus his older brother was and how he uh he he he he designated 90% of his marketing to support the war efforts during World War II and really put the products on the back burner because he loved this country and knew what it had done for him and his family and um you know some of those things and then to see how my dad worked and how he loved the industry I just felt it was in my blood and like you said earlier I felt like I blood I bleed blood beer and so I wanted to keep it going and so I started the William K. Bush Brewing Company I couldn't call it um the only way I could use a bush name was by using my full name I started the William K. Bush Brewing and it was a difficult time because at that point it was a 2011 at that point the craft beer industry was taking off and I came out with a uh with with more of a everyday beer um like a Budweiser or Miller or of course so you're standard you're standard beer and um people were turning towards a heavier more tasteful beers full full body beers and I came out it was kind of bad timing to come out with that but um I did and uh you know to get any traction um in the mainstream part of the beer industry where you're going against the behemoths like Budweiser Miller in course is very very difficult and they're all you always got to target on your back so for 10 years I worked hard to try to grow that business and we got into five or six different different states as far as distribution goes but we never could get any traction so um we have to end up we ended up closing that down um and we got in uh we now are are doing our own uh we built our own brewery right outside of St. Louis, Missouri in an area called St. Charles and we invite people to come out to our place to our farm and enjoy the beautiful farm atmosphere out there nature um we've got animals around there we've got great food for people we make 12 different beers out there we have our own brewery and we're actually starting to distribute um locally in the area so you know what I love the beer in beer business um my family my immediate family once in a while looks at me and says dad you know um why do you keep doing this you work really hard you're not making any money doing it and it's it's just that uh you know I just I just I feel that it's my destiny basically I feel like it's something that I need to do to honor my ancestors I think that's beautiful I think there's nothing wrong with that I mean it it is definitely not easy you have the name behind you but at this point the market is very different than when your great grandfather tried to build something right it's it's a slightly just slightly different competitive environment do you find that it's been easier or harder because of your name to build something in the in the beer industry you know it's funny you say that because one of the things that my father always said was uh you know what would a dolphin stew whenever he had to make a big decision he would think about his grandfather and he would ask them self the question what would um what would my what would a dolphin stew and um I asked that question because the of the saturated market how would a dolphin uh handle the beer business today and I really haven't come up with the answer to that yet but I know that he would have figured it out a way because he was so innovative um as far as the question you asked me about um what was the question I'm sorry Scott it was whether or not your name the bush name makes it harder or easier to build something in the beer industry in the spirits industry or I guess beer yeah well I think it's harder um and I'll tell you why I think you it puts more stress on the person is trying to build the um the uh to keep that tradition going of brewing and because you're filling you choose I mean you're you're going back to a time when your ancestors your father your grandfather great-grandfather were so successful in the business and it did so well and you want to try to bring that back to America and make it make the American beer because you know and in bev is not American and um you know is Budweiser Budweiser no longer the number one beer and it's um it's daunting it's a daunting challenge to try to reinvent that and and to keep that going I took the pressure off myself to say I don't need to be that big I don't need to grow that big especially at first you know we can do this slowly what happens is when another beer company hears about a bush um in their space and they see that uh that you're you're in that space you've got that story to tell you're making a great beer because the beer that we made made um one metals all around the world um incredible metals we had a great beer again I followed what I learned from my ancestors and that was quality is everything we never cut corners and we made a very very wonderful wonderful beer but what happens is and it happened within Beth they put a target on our back as a matter of fact I heard the name of the target they called it the kill bill campaign and the Anasar Bush wholesalers kill bill campaign it was kill me get us out of there don't let us get any traction don't let us get started so every time we would get a promotion you know a major promotion like in bush stadium at the baseball park or something like that the Anasar Bush in Bev would go in right away and they would say they would tell the vendor in there no you guys can't do that are we're gonna pull our beers out and of course you know the vendor couldn't I wouldn't allow their beers to be pulled out of there because their beers are the biggest selling beers and um and so they would then drop our promotion right away and um you know this happened time and time again we get a promotion they'd come in and they would kill it so uh those kinds of things were we're very very difficult I guess the advantage of of it is that we have that wonderful story I can tell that story like I'm telling it to you Scott and I think every product needs a story or it's very helpful to have a story behind a product so that they um can get that out there especially today with social media and all the um interesting outlets that you have out there to tell your story a quick shout out to the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story now if you like success story you're gonna love other podcasts in their network one of my favorites is create like the greats it's hosted by Ross Simmons obviously brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network you're gonna join Ross on create like the greats Ross dissect the genius behind histories most remarkable creators and their legendary 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up to five other students or if you want you can go one-on-one for personalized attention their native level teachers don't just teach language they share culture too and you'll speak confidently from day one with Lingoda's flexible scheduling and proven curriculum students report being able to navigate real conversations in weeks not years and if you're using Lingoda for business their CEFR aligned courses ensure that you're learning internationally recognized language standards that employers value between sessions you're gonna reinforce your skills with downloadable materials and bite-sized practice exercises and all success story listeners they put together a special deal try Lingoda free with three group classes or one private class plus you save on any course with my link try dot Lingoda dot com slash success story and code Scott 25 don't miss this chance to transform your life through language learning when you look at when you look at how you built your brewery and how you now you work on businesses now what is fundamentally changed because you've gone through sort of your own entrepreneurial journey as well so how do you think about business building you can talk about some of the things that you work on work on today but how do you build businesses now what are some entrepreneurial lessons or things that you've learned from your family from I don't want to say like failed venture but you shut down the brewery so you moved on to other things what are some lessons well first of all you're gonna learn a lot more from your failures than you are from your wins so definitely learn from your failures and I think I've learned a lot from my failures in the beer business we're now called the bush family brewing into stilling company and you can look up our website at bushfamilyfarm.com or bush family brewing into stilling and check out our website but I think what I've learned is to not give up if you have a dream go for it and you know I'm not there yet but it keeps me going and gets me up early every single day and keeps me passionate and and I think know your numbers I mean I think one of my big things was if you're if you're not a numbers person and you're more of the top line thinker in the business make sure you have somebody very very competent who can tell you your numbers so that you know each and every day what your numbers are and that you're either if you're losing money you know exactly how much money you're losing if you're making money you know exactly how much money you're making if you think you are where you think you are because sales are good guess what you might not be selling that much or excuse me you might not be making that much money because maybe your expenses are running higher than you realize or maybe your margins aren't as strong as as as you thought they were and so even though you could be selling like crazy and you're doing a great job at that you could still be losing money so those are the kinds of things if you're if you're a money person make sure you have a great marketing person someone who's a top line thinker if you're a top line thinker and you're looking and you're and you're and you're pushing for new ideas and the future and what you're going to do next then make sure you have a good numbers person those two things look so incredibly important when you look at even the look at your family dynamics you and Christy you clearly take a different approach to raising your kids then your own upbringing you take a different approach to family what are some specific things and you've been talking like in a family context in a business context because family obviously is a central team for you have a beautiful family what do you do differently than how you are raised well thank you for saying I have a beautiful family sky yeah I'm very proud um Christy and I are very proud of our seven kids and we raised them completely different than what I was raised you know I was pretty much raised by the people on grants farm the people that worked there the help my dad mom were busy running the brewery and growing the the business and so I completely understand what they you know that they had to do that but I think you know in a family business in any business I think you have to have your priority straight I think it's very very important that you always put your family first even ahead of your business as hard as that can be at times because sometimes your your family and your business are all intertwined right I mean in order to send your kids to a good school you got to make sure you're making money in order to go on nice vacations you got to make sure you're making money so it's it's very difficult to do that sometimes to separate the two but I think it's very important and you have to have the discipline in order to separate and keep your priority straight and make your family uh the your number one your your number number one responsibility in life and everything comes after that and I just think that that that's very important and it's very easy to lose side up side up and so what Kristie and I do today is uh we're much more involved with our kids than um my parents were with me uh sometimes to the point where you can get to involved with them too you don't want to be that helicopter parent right you gotta let them learn for themselves and let them fail for themselves but um you know we support them and everything they do my oldest son Billy senior or excuse me Billy junior I'm Billy senior um Billy junior is now married he's got two beautiful kids so we have two beautiful grandsons or twins or you're in a half old now and he has his own uh hunting apparel company called Geistgear Geist means ghost in German is g-e-i-s-t as a matter of fact I'm wearing a guy's very good I saw when you jumped on camera it looks quite good it looks quite good yeah it's so warm and so comfortable so cold outside today so I'm wearing it and he um so if you're a duck hunter if you're a deer hunter if you're any kind of hunter um he has on his website pretty much everything for hunting apparel that you can imagine and if you go to geistgear.com um he only sells online and uh you can find find his is very high quality apparel great stuff and I think you'll love it especially for you hunters out there you really are a ghost in the woods um as Geist um means and then um and then you know um we support him all they've all gone to college they've all done uh um they all they've all worked hard our youngest son just graduated from high school he's the only one that's not going to go to college but you know I'm kind of okay with that today Scott I think um college might be a little overrated um he's getting in the um in the real estate business he's gonna start doing some developing we also have a hotel that we're renovating in south beach Miami right on the beach which uh which one because I'm in Miami so I got to go check it out. You're getting out drive by it so it's right across from the palm hotel um in the iina district it's 3010 Collins 3010 college but it's the shell right now and um when it's all said and done it's gonna be 89 rooms it's gonna be a five star luxury boutique hotel with a great restaurant and a great rooftop and a great spa and a and a recording studios we're gonna have in there so um yeah check it out Scott I think we're looking forward to that being done so we're we're partners in that with another family the acilene family so it's a bush and acilene that are that are involved in that my son Gussie and um a couple daughters are very much involved in managing it and uh Peter's not getting involved in that our youngest son and then my other daughters are all you know uh someone selling a house they're also in the real estate business um selling houses residential homes and uh you know we support them all doing do we support each and every one and what they want to do in life and they're all becoming productive really good members of society and we love to see that and they I shouldn't say becoming they are um I wish they were more interested in the beer business but it's been a rough go it truly has when we had the first company um it didn't go as planned uh we hit a lot of challenges and that's what happens in business um so we had to kind of reinvent the um the strategy on how we were gonna the model the business model how we're gonna do it the next this time so we've done that and I think things are gonna go much smoother so maybe just maybe if I'm lucky they'll see that um it's it's a good business and that they they might even get interested in it you know I kind of got to do what my great grandfather did with his son and let him kind of figure it they got to figure it out on their own and then if they ever want to do it hopefully they'll come and be a part of it but um you know it's up to me right now to make it happen they uh so it's it sounds like um outside of all being successful and figuring out their own path and whatnot everybody kind of still works together to some degree they're all supporting each other that's that's correct yet we all work together we're a very very close family we take vacations all of us together um we spend a lot of time you know especially holidays uh together and yeah I'm thankful because they say the biggest success in life is if your kids want to come and be with you once they grow up and um we are very successful when it comes to that when you think about everything that you've witnessed in your own family and there's been conflicts and stress with your own you know your own brothers and sisters uh but it seems like everything's going well with your kids and and they're very close so what would be the advice that you'd get for people who want to mix family and business how did you do it right well I think um I think you have to have a a a really strong um and a very black and white uh will or what you how you're gonna leave them things okay and and I spent a lot of time working on that so that the same thing that happened with my siblings won't happen to them and that is okay here's what you're here's what you're left here's how things are are done and um you know it's as fair as I could possibly be uh for each and every one of you and they'll realize that um you know might take them wild to realize that uh for but at least they won't have the fighting because it's all black and white as much as possible and they won't be able to hire lawyers and give them money and make the lawyers rich and them lose money to lawyers to um to go through all that and I think um I think you know while I'm still alive I have to kind of follow those same kind of um thought that thought that thought pattern and just keep everything black and white and keep it as fair as I possibly can um and even those sometimes it may not be as fair as you want it to be it still beats a hell out of infighting and uh nobody needs that try to keep that out of your life you think about all the different aspects of sort of the bush family legacy which which parts of it do you want to preserve through your kids what are the parts of the bush family story that you want them to take forward because obviously you're not forcing uh beer and brewery down their throats you want them to get involved they like it but what are some parts of that legacy that you do want them to carry forward hard work um I want them to all be hard workers and and and um and be productive in life and to give back and to leave a good legacy where they showed good will to their communities and to the people that surrounded them be great family members be a good husband and a wife um when when those days happen um be great parents have their priorities straight keep their priorities um the way they should be and it seems like uh as generations went on our priorities kind of uh slipped um I look back and see what migraine grandfather my grandfather and I see how they always kept family very very close and very very important to them I think I honestly have to say I think my father lost a little bit of that um and not you because I think that I think he was you know I think there's reasons for that and I think the reason for that basically is because he was running this company and he let that company become as important if not more important than his kids to a certain degree and um and I think up until then that never happened and that's why I think there was an easier transition from one generation to the next generation but I think it's as time went on and I think this is why you don't have multi multi multi generational businesses is because it starts to slip and it's easy to forget what's important and what's not as important and lose your priorities and I think when you do that things start to get start to fail yeah I agree with that and and I think you see like this is the scary thing right like in one generation I see people building businesses that replace their families as the priority and that's when you see people with broken homes and no relationships with their kids and you know how many divorces later but in in their life they are financially successful but there's no there's no legacy there's nothing beyond their life right because that attitude it never survives it will never survive and you saw it and for generations that wasn't the case in your family until it was and that's when things start to fall apart exactly Scott that's exactly right and I think to leave that legacy I think um you know that you have to have your priorities um keep your family close to you and then everything after that is um falls in place and you know um that's just the way it is and to and I think that good will and I think what what does family do for you family actually inspires you to do better and to be a better person and to grow your business because now you know you're going to leave that to your kids and you're going to leave it to them in a way this kind of makes sense and I think that you know to be able to leave that legacy and to have that inspiration from your family to leave that to them but not only to them but to society itself is very important and I think that's what Adolfis and Lily did I just watched this old clip that they made about Adolfis and Lily um and they built a beautiful gardens it was the first bush gardens that ever built I talked about this a little bit in the book in Pasadena California and they built this incredible gardens it was like 40 acres of horticulture they had hundreds and hundreds of um horticulturists and gardeners working there uh to to make this place beautiful and they built it for their family but then they started inviting people there and they left this beautiful estate for people to come and visit and it lasted you know and uh for for for several years um way past my father's my great-grandfather's death and the last little um you know up until I pretty much my my uh grandmother my great-grandmother died but they left a beautiful legacy and wonderful goodwill and that's it they talk a little bit about that and one of their inspirations was for their family but to leave something for society that's beautiful in life I think that's I by the way just that line that lesson I think is a beautiful thing for people to work towards in general if you're building anything leave something beautiful behind I think that's a great north star for people to have when they're building anything um what's next for the Bush family brewing tradition what's next for you I mean talk about if somebody is is a beer lover what what do you want them to know if people just are more interested in projects that you might take on in the future uh will be next you know um basically I think the last time we opened up for brewery the the brewery that we had the William K. Bush brewery one of the reasons that failed is I think we started running before we could even walk and I think in any business you have to kind of um uh crawl then walk then you know I'm hopefully you can run and take off right and I think that uh right now we're kind of in that crawling stage and you know we've opened up the brewery um to the public people come and it's very much uh you know an extension of what I did when I was a uh how I grew up opening up our farm to the public we're opening up now the new farm to the public um we've got the animals there we're serving beer we're making wonderful beers we make the Gussi Bavarian which is a wonderful hellis beer we make a great pilsner called the Adolphus Pilsner we still make creftig light which is which came from our old brewery and people love and uh we make several others that are they're in they're called by family names and um you know we're starting now to slowly go to host sailors and host sailors are picking up our beer now and they're um they're starting to take it to the to retail so we'll see how that goes you know we'll see we'll uh we'll kind of see that scalable we'll also see honestly if um you know this this this small kind of craft type brewery is scalable um after we we we see if if our proof of concept here works out in St in St Charles Missouri if that works out then what's to say we couldn't go to outside another kind of major metropolitan area like outside of Dallas or Nashville or I'm just throwing some cities out there that that might be cool places to to build another one like that and to um and to tell to tell our story and I don't know if if the public here is all into it or into the history but you know if this does prove out to be something that works well I think this is a way to get into the beer industry right now I think trying to get into the beer industry like I did in the past is very difficult because you've got the big boys out there that are trying to kill you I think if you're a craft brewer I think you're good within about a 25 mile radius once you go past that radius is very hard to sell your beer because then you have your next craft who people are buying from locally and it's just um and there's so many darn breweries around now that does it's very hard to get traction so maybe this is a way to kind of start getting traction and become um you know a major player in the beer industry again although I will say Scott uh the beer business is hurting right now there are a lot of the young people like your age and even younger are um are not drinking as much any longer um so you know the beer itself is down as far sales go and will that come back maybe it will maybe it won't but we'll see yeah I mean you're right I didn't the whole market is probably going through a shift right now when I when I'm going to a restaurant or a bar well especially in Miami everyone's drinking tequila but right right yeah but uh I think that listen I think that if anyone has a shot of of bringing back an industry or being successful it's it's a brand with a story stories do matter to people I think that stories matter the most people don't necessarily love huge conglomerate without a story I think that feels devoid of any soul so I think that the story is important and I think that like you have a good one so that's uh that's that's that's a competitive advantage if nothing else um it's a start yeah it's a start yeah it's a start a lot of work but it's still it's still a good it's still a good basis um so your book family reigns they can get that anywhere they can get books and get on Amazon they can get it do you have a website as well that you want to send people to uh no I don't have a website on that but you can go family reigns the extraordinary rise and epic follow of an American dynasty if you go wherever like you said it's got wherever books are sold um you can find it uh go to Amazon and get it from there it's a great read I think people I've been getting nothing but positive feedback as well those kinds of books that you can't put down once you start reading it it's not that long of a book some people read it in three or four days so um I think I think there's a little of something there's something in there for everyone everyone's got a story to tell I told my story is fairly unique and I think people will enjoy it I think so too oh this was this was great um we spoke about a lot uh before before we wrap up was there anything that I didn't go into or any question that I should have asked you that you think would be useful insightful for the audience I don't think so Scott I think we've covered a lot I think uh you asked wonderful questions and I hope I didn't go on and on too much about with my answers but I gotta tell you okay good I'm really happy with the questions you asked and that I was able to verbalize them to you no you're you were amazing I appreciate your time uh last question I like to ask everyone and I'll ask you to go like a little bit deeper only because you have touched on this a little bit but it is it is the it is a way that we close this out so out of all the lessons in the wisdom and the and the ups and downs the highs the lows uh you've experienced over your life if you could only pick one lesson that you can leave your kids with you can only choose one the most important thing that you've learned that you've experienced what would that lesson be that's a really tough question um I think the lesson would be to always have faith in yourself to never lose that faith to believe in yourself believe that there is that God is out there and that with God you can you can do anything that you have a path in life and that you should find what that path is and go for it with all your heart, mind and soul