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I am currently reading Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Entrepreneurship from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery.  When I got it I thought it was going to be a book about Sam Calagione starting up and expanding Dogfish Head Craft Brewery.  Instead, while it covers him starting the brewery and expanding it, the book is mostly about his philosophy about business and life in general.  He goes into great detail about how he made the decisions that led to success and to failures in running the brewery.  The book explains how he tries to maintain a business where the employees and customers come first.

Until I read this book, I had some idea that Sam must be pretty good at marketing himself since I had seen him interviewed in a couple of documentaries about the beer business.  I believe after reading this book that he is good at what he does, because he has an outlook on business that is a different than most businessmen.  It’s not that he doesn’t want to make money, it’s that he wants to make money by giving customers what they want.  He accomplishes this by getting constant feedback from customers and knowing what his position is in the brewing business.

While this book may be about a craft brewery it can definitely be looked at as a general guideline for how to successfully run a business.  I really wish more people took Sam’s philosophy about business to heart and used it to guide them in their business decisions.  All told I heavily recommend this book to anyone.  This is a book about business in the way that The Tao of Pooh is a book about Winnie the Pooh.  If you want a good read, and a book that you may easily expect to read again then get this book.