Change is inevitable. Progress is optional.

Brad Benson opened Stoup Brewing in 2013 with his wife, Lara Zahaba, and a third partner, Robyn Schumacher. Brad and I grew up together, were roommates in college, started our lives together in Seattle after graduation and served as the best man in each other’s weddings. I have supported the brewery from the beginning. I know, tough duty, but what are friends for? When Brad made the decision to quit his job as an environmental chemist of more than 20 years, we talked about “burning the boats” and how there would be no turning back; it had to work. 

I built Stoup’s first website and have tried to help Brad think through business strategy as the company expanded over the years. In 2019, Stoup added an extra 6,000 square feet of production space in a new building behind the existing beer garden, giving Brad the ability to triple Stoup’s beer production. Then the pandemic hit in early 2020 and more than 100 bars and restaurants around Seattle that had been pouring Stoup stopped serving anything to anyone and shuttered their doors to help slow the spread of the virus. At the time Stoup rarely put its beer in cans or other packages and made almost all of its money from draft beer, poured into glasses and consumed at bars and restaurants or in the taproom at the brewery. 

Breweries around the nation were looking to make the same pivot to cans that Stoup was eyeing so the market for canning equipment became incredibly tight. One of Brad’s brewer friends eventually tipped Brad off that a much bigger brewery in town had purchased a new, large-scale canning line and would be looking to sell its old machine. Brad called and negotiated a fast sale and, by June, Stoup had its own permanent canning line up and running. It was a big expense to take on at a time when the brewery’s revenue had almost entirely disappeared, but Brad felt the risk needed to be taken. 

Before the pandemic, 99 percent of Stoup’s revenue that didn’t come from the taproom at the brewery was generated by draft, poured at restaurants and bars around the city. By the end of 2020, 75 percent of that revenue came from packaged beer, sold in cans in grocery stores and specialty beer markets. Stoup brought in more revenue in December of 2020 than it did in December of 2019 (even though the profit margin was much lower). 

It was still a rough year for Stoup and so many other small businesses. Brad and his founding partners took a pay cut to help avoid any layoffs and Brad spent countless hours filling out paperwork for government aid and other programs designed to help businesses impacted by the health crisis. They ended the year on a positive note with more staff than before the pandemic because of the shift in the business model. Plus the experience and learnings of having gone through some of the darkest days a small business can face. 

“I came back to those initial conversations of ‘burning the boats,’” Brad told me. “We sat down and said there’s no other option, we’re not going to let this fail. What can we do today to move this forward?” 

Change is inevitable but progress is optional. Stoup's story is one of countless pivots that companies and organizations made in 2020, faced with changes to their operations they could never have predicted. We all face changes in our lives that we didn't invite. Somewhere in that challenge lies an opportunity. 

What recent change in your life is an opportunity to move something important forward? 

(Photo of Brad Benson courtesy: Erinn Hale)

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This is an excerpt from The Butterfly Impact, my upcoming book on finding work-life happiness in a post-pandemic world.  Sign up here to receive future excerpts and updates (about twice a month).