Gary Fish, who transformed a small brewpub in downtown Bend into the top-selling brewery in Oregon and Washington, presented the key address to the Class of 2009 at Oregon State University - Cascades' commencement. Fish is president of Deschutes Brewery in Bend, and a leading figure across Central Oregon’s business and philanthropic landscape.
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO THE CLASS OF 2009
by Gary Fish, President, Deschutes Brewery, Inc.
June 13, 2009
Helen Hayes the great actress once said: “My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others. That is nice but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success.”
Congratulations to the class of 2009!
You have truly crossed the bridge and made it more than a metaphor.
Congratulations also to all the families and friends, - the Orlando Family - employers and people who helped get you to where you are today, there are many. Thank you to President Ray, Vice-President Johnson, Regents, faculty and staff, you have done an extraordinary job in a time that is challenging to say the least. Our ability to thrive is being challenged like few other times in our history.
It is interesting though that in the midst of the worst recession in 70 years, with the very institution you are graduating from under attack for its existence, you get a beer guy to give the graduates words of encouragement as they move on to the next chapter of their lives. Well, I’ve come to learn, beer can be the answer to many things, I just didn’t anticipate this as I wondered about my own future 30 years ago this week as I sat where you are today at my graduation from the University of Utah. Yes, I’ll admit, I had consumed some beer the night before, and maybe the night of as well in celebration. Maybe I just didn’t recognize the omen.
But really, you need to understand what an incredible honor it is for me to be standing here. And, I’ll indulge you a bit by asking you to all smile very big, wave if you like as I memorialize this moment. (take picture)
Both my parents and many of my relatives are graduates of Oregon State University. So, I am very proud to be here.
I’ve done a fair amount of public speaking in my life and it has never really bothered me much. I must confess, however, this is a big one. I was telling a friend this the other day and he said, using a baseball metaphor, yea, most speeches you can simply hit a single and the crowd will think you did just fine. This is one of those times when everyone will be expecting you to hit it out of the park. So, I have that going for me. How do you feel?
I am supposed to convey some pearls of wisdom to send with you out into the world that will provide inspiration and a sense of purpose. Oh, and I’m supposed to keep it short.
Well, anyone who knows me knows, if you want an opinion, just ask. I’ve usually got one. So,I’ll keep it as short as I can, but, well, you know.
My advice, my pearl of wisdom is complicated, it goes like this: Do Something!
Vincent Van Gogh said: Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Don’t wait for that something to come to you. You cannot wait for the perfect opportunity. Rather, see each opportunity presenting itself perfectly. If you wait for that perfect pitch, you’ll never get a hit, certainly never win the game. Perfection is evolutionary. Each step you take leads you to the next one.
You have been preparing all your life for this moment. Now you are poised to go out and make your mark on the world.
Steve Jobs the co-founder of Apple put it this way. He said, “I want to put a ding in the universe”.
You will walk into a turbulent time. I was born in Berkeley in the 1950’s and as a baby boomer child of the 60’s I was raised in a very turbulent time. Now that I think of it, I’m not sure, in my memory; we have had anything but turbulent times of one kind or another. Nonetheless, these times certainly are extraordinary. The prospects for gainful employment are challenging at best, much less for the fulfilling careers we all want to have.
When I graduated college, I had a degree in economics. I was working waiting tables as I had for most of my college career. I had been working in restaurants since I was 16 enjoying it but never intending a career in the restaurant business. As I graduated without a plan (I’m sure you’re different though) I was offered an opportunity to move into management at the restaurant where I was working. Having no other offers, I accepted, still expecting not to make a career in the restaurant business but thinking the experience might be valuable some day as I pursued a career in some other industry.
A couple short years later, I made my break from the restaurant business, I was finally done. And I got a job working in the marketing department for a multi-level marketing company selling whey based dry milk products. They did not pay me enough to eat, but they did provide some valuable training which, of course, I did not fully appreciate at the time. You see, many of these types of companies seemed prone to developing shady marketing and compensation practices for their legions of self-employed, network generating sales people. Sometimes, these marketing organizations looked a lot like pyramid schemes. At least they did then. Yes, and we were being investigated by just about every attorney general in the country it seemed.
The front people in this whole operation were us, a very small marketing department. But the company provided me terrific media training so I could talk to the press and answer the tough questions. I learned to speak in front of large crowds . . . and at the end of it all; I also learned to recognize shady operations! But it was not to last. When they went out of business and I was laid off, I went back to what I knew, the restaurant business, where I knew I could succeed; tending bar. But, as I mentioned earlier, like most things, this led somewhere too, it was where I met my wife, Carol. And the concept began to develop for a restaurant that I could be a partner in and further my career the next step. I worked my way in to a small sweat equity position with a restaurant in Salt Lake City. I was an owner, not a very big owner, but an owner nonetheless.
It took 15 years of getting out of the restaurant business until I finally realized my future was really in the restaurant business. It was at this operation I met one of our investors, Greg Schirf, who founded Wasatch Brewing Company in 1986, brewers of such luminary beers as Polygamy Porter and St. Provo Girl. The seed was planted. Soon after that my father let me know his business partner’s son was working on opening a brewpub in Sacramento. It was really my father’s inspiration that lit the spark. Maybe that’s what he learned at Oregon State.
My wife, Carol, and I moved to Bend in 1987 to open Deschutes Brewery & Public House and realize the potential of my restaurant career by combining brewing with the operation of a restaurant, manufacturing and retailing under the same roof. This was to be a modest venture, a 100 seat brewpub where we would serve some good food and good beer and we would lead a simple, comfortable life and raise a family.
My wife Carol and I struck out to create this destiny in this small town of 12,000 people which we had visited twice. Having come from a wine making family in California, there were similarities with the development of the beer business in the mid 80’s and the development of the California wine business in the late 60’s and early 70’s, but with the restaurant operation we could manufacture and retail in the same business, eliminating middle men and allowing us to justify the cost of the brewing process. Little did we appreciate what being in this small town would mean.
People often ask if we ever anticipated where the company has grown to or if we set out to create the company you know today. The answer is, are you crazy? Our original business plan was the brewpub and only the brewpub. I was a restaurant guy. We risked everything we had, which wasn’t much, and a significant portion of my parents’ retirement, to come to a small town in the throes of a deep recession to chase a dream. We had no real idea of what we were getting in to. Once we were here and got started and overcame the travails of starting a business, we got caught up in the growth of the craft beer industry and took off. We never really stopped to think we were creating an important business in any way. We were simply trying to survive and do the right thing for our co-workers and our community and keep it simple.
Today we are the 6th largest craft brewer and the 16th largest brewer overall in the country and are looking to grow more. The brewery will celebrate its 21st birthday 2- weeks from now. It’s kind of a funny milestone. Hey, we’re finally legal! We did not start out to create what we are today, only to do the right thing. Each day we just try to be a little bit better than we were the day before. Where will we be 21 years from now? Maybe you can tell me.
Do what you can, because each step you take leads you to the next one.
Along this journey we did other things too. We did what we could. Deschutes Brewery has been recognized for its commitment to its community. We have been fortunate and many people have applauded our efforts and we have received many accolades which, because at the end of the day we are ultimately a for profit company, are always nice. Often I am asked why we do what we do as though there is some secret, powerful motivation behind us. My simple response is, “because we can”. It may seem overly simplistic but it is fundamental to who we are and why we are here. We do what we can, always. Most of the time what we can do are small things, but as we are seeing, small things add up.
The Sagebrush Classic is a charity event in July where we play golf and host a dinner where chefs from around the world come and prepare their specialties. It is in its 21st year. It began as a fun golf tournament for our pub customers in 1989. After a fairly successful first year we associated with the Deschutes Children’s Foundation to get some volunteer help with the event and raised $1,200. The next year we raised about $2,500, then $5,000 the next and so on. Regularly along the way someone working on the event would come up with a good idea. One great idea in 1994 was to see if Broken Top, the cool new club in town would be interested in working with us. They were. Then their General Manager at the time suggested we could get chefs who he knew to come and prepare the dinner if we paid for the travel. We took a risk and sold tickets to the dinner, exclusive of the golf.
The event continued to grow as new people came on board and brought other new ideas. To date the Sagebrush Classic has raised over $2,000,000. We did not set out with this goal, but we never limited it either. We simply pursued good ideas when we found them. Each step leads you to the next one. We do it because we can. What can you do? I’m guessing quite a lot. How will you live so you may improve others lives and the community around you, while improving your own?
In the grand scheme of things, when I sat where you are, being here, at this moment, could not have been a more remote possibility. What a thrill and an honor to be able to speak to you today about all that beer has taught me. No really, beer has taught me a lot. Mostly it has taught me about life.
You are the tech generation. You grew up with computers, something I did not. You have YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and many, many more. You have blogs, email, text messaging.
When I was young my parents put phones in our rooms out of defeat to keep us off their phone line because we were always talking to our friends. Now my children hardly even speak on the phone any more, they use cell phones and they text. This is indicative of how we communicate these days. And part of our problem with public discourse as well.
Communication now happens from great distances over largely anonymous mediums. Heck even our own local weekly independent newspaper will print letters to the editor anonymously. We are not talking to each other anymore. We are e-mailing, texting, blogging. Social networking is all the rage. Anything you do, or mistake you make could be irretrievably dispersed across the globe instantaneously. And, when it comes to important social or political discussion, we are able (and sometimes encouraged) to sit on the sidelines anonymously, hurling rhetorical hand grenades with impunity, never to be accountable for our words. Such is the challenge you face as this society is turned over to you.
But, there is hope. The Public House is coming back. You see, in the return of the pub, the Public House, it is different. If you walk into our pub just about any day of the week at around 5pm, you will see people talking. You will see people from all socio-economic strata, white collar, blue collar, male, female, young, old, in between, and they are talking. They are talking about current events, sports, politics, your family, their family, my family. They are joking, they are agreeing and disagreeing, and they are talking.
No one is anonymous, even if I don’t know your name. Everyone is accountable for their words. And you will be called on it if you say something outrageous. And they are talking.
My contention is this is a sight unique to the local pub. With all deference to my wine drinking brethren you will not see this interaction in a wine bar. You will not see this in establishments where most of their beverages are dispensed in martini glasses and come in every color not commonly found in nature. The common element is beer. This is what I have learned from beer.
At Deschutes Brewery, our mission statement says: To profitably deliver the finest beers in the world and share the Deschutes Brewery experience while building a healthier society.
The pub experience exemplifies what we refer to as “the Deschutes Brewery experience” and this example is a great deal of what we refer to by “building a healthier society”. This is the society we are turning over to you. What will you do with it?
Don’t avoid disagreement. Don’t automatically dismiss those who disagree with you. There’s much too much of that already. If you only associate with people who agree with you, you will miss out one of society’s gifts. I rarely learn anything from someone who agrees with me.
People at our company have learned I like a good vigorous debate and if no one is interested in pursuing one with me, well sometimes I’ll have one with myself. By trying to understand the other side of an issue, you open yourself up to all kinds of possibilities. And, as far as our business is concerned, we always come out with better decisions when we have properly vetted ideas through this vigorous discussion, this constructive conflict. Unfortunately, our political system is currently based more on winning and losing than problem solving and right and wrong. Will you have exercise the power to change that?
Add Value:
In order to realize the success I’ve described or even the achievement Helen Hayes talked about, you must add value. No matter what you are doing you must benefit more than you cost. I have counseled many new hires that the only reason anyone is hired in any position anywhere is to solve more problems than they create. The fact you show up and fill a spot on my schedule solves a problem. The fact I have to pay you for that creates a problem. That’s where the balance begins. The more you keep that balance tipped in your favor, the better you will do. This is simple advice but most good advice is. It is a rule that exists everywhere.
Be Remarkable:
You have already done something remarkable simply by your presence today acknowledging what you have accomplished. You are where you are because of choices you made, the good ones and the bad. Some of those choices may have been made because of circumstances not of your own doing. I have certainly made bad choices on my journey. I won’t bother to describe any of them to you today, however. You are responsible for where you are. Make the most of it. Be your best. Be Remarkable!
For all my obvious and not so obvious faults, no matter what I was doing, I wanted to be the best. It was not a position arrived at that clearly because I was not the smartest, or the fastest. I was not the best athlete or the most popular in school. But somewhere down deep, I knew if I put my mind to it and worked hard enough I could accomplish anything. I always seemed to measure my performance against whatever measurement I could find and then I would improve. I did not always achieve at the highest level, but I believed it was always within my reach.
When you display that kind of desire and drive, people seek you out because successful people want to associate with other successful people. The point is to put you in the position to choose what you want to do rather than have it chosen for you.
Are you remarkable? Certainly. You have accomplished a remarkable milestone. But, it is only a milestone. There are many more ahead.
Pat Riley, the great basketball coach said it this way, “Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.”
Thank you for this remarkable opportunity. I hope I have helped make it worthwhile, you certainly have for me. I can’t wait to see the ding you put in the universe!
Now go out and have a beer! You’ve earned it.
Thank you.
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