Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
If you need a kick in the pants to start the new year, may I present Jacquie Berglund, CEO and, as she calls herself, “Rambunctious Social Entrepreneur,” at Finnegans Brew Co.
I spent a delightful hour with her the other day at her stunning new brewhouse and taproom in the Elliot Park neighborhood on the south edge of downtown. Finnegans opened last St. Patrick’s Day. It quickly became a community gathering place, with an R&D lab brewing new beers to test before the winners are rolled out for contract production and distribution.
In the summer, the fun spills into the large lot behind the brewhouse, with games to play and tables to gather around. “We could solve the world’s problems if we could grab a beer and sit around a picnic table,” she declares.
Well, maybe not all the world’s problems. But with Berglund behind the charge you could definitely take a good crack at some of them. In fact, Berglund has been working for 18 years to solve some of the thorniest ones by setting her company up from day one to donate 100 percent of its profits to charitable causes.
In the beginning, Berglund was the venture’s sole employee, running around town trying to convince beer distributors that her business model was sound, or at least not insane. “The 100 percent idea, they thought I was crazy,” she says with her booming voice and hearty laugh. “I do everything inside out and backwards.”
By Finnegans’ 10-year anniversary, she took a hard look at those donations, and although she was proud of contributing to a variety of causes aimed at reducing poverty, she had trouble crisply stating the impact the efforts were making. “My own family was confused,” she says, and she thought, “I’ve got to figure out a different way.” She came across a food bank that purchases organic produce for a dollar a pound and it goes to food shelves, so now in every community where her beer is sold, profits from her company go straight into local hands. “That is so tight,” she says. “It is truly scalable giving.” In fact, “Drink Local, Give Local” is Finnegans’ now-succinct motto.
By about 2016, Berglund realized, “I was the only brewery in Minnesota without a taproom,” as the number of licenses grew past 190 from just a handful when she first got started. “That put us at a huge disadvantage.”
With help from people at the Paul Newman Foundation, the largest, oldest and most well-known “100 percent profits to charity company,” she set up her model so she could attract outside investors to put up about $2 million to build the new Finnegans brewhouse and still keep the 100 percent charitable mantle.
Asked what lesson she could pass on to other entrepreneurs, she doesn’t hesitate. “Swim in your own lane. It’s easy to lose your focus on who and what you are.”
Berglund regularly makes a point of going back to a foundational question: What is your purpose? For her, it’s the $1.3 million Finnegans has donated since 2003, with much more to come as the new operation brings both higher expenses but also the potential for greater profits.
“It gets me out of bed every day,” she says, even when she is in “the depths of despair,” as every entrepreneur will be from time to time. I’d like to raise a glass to Berglund and her mighty cause, along with every other entrepreneur who’s found a reason for being.
