Part 2 - The True Story of Starting a Brewery From Scratch with Dr. Ty Eriks

Welcome to this edition of the million dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. Well, now, first of all, let's talk about how substantial the beer business is already. Oh, we'll talk about how you got into it and all, but let people know we're talking about something serious.

So we started like any other startup business, we did not buy a business. We started from scratch. We built the building out. We. The. This building that you kind of got the panorama of was empty white box when we came in here. So there's a lot of build up that had to happen on my business partner at the time and I did it together. All the most of the build out that we were legally able to do, we did on nights and weekends and all that because again, trying to make it work financially and all that.

Really?

Yeah, we did a lot of it on our own.

So now you're on your feet a lot. Yeah, you know, I've been in the office with a lot of running back and forth to office to office, patient to patient. You're on your feet and at the end of the day you go back down to Lauderdale and now you're a construction worker.

Yeah, you wear a lot of hats trying to do all this stuff.

You have a lot of energy.

You gotta. Well, you gotta do a lot of stuff on your own. I mean, you gotta. If you. A lot of banks and that kind of thing, they don't want to do all that stuff because it's too much risk. So do what you got to do to make it work. This is the dream that we had. And yes, it took a lot of nights and weekends and birthdays and whatever to build this place out and started. So.

So what you're doing, you're cleaning your carpentry, you're painting.

Yep. Everything. Yeah, everything.

Where did you learn how to do all that?

My grandfather mostly. I grew up doing a lot of carpentry with my grandfather, my mom's dad. We built everything. Building our rooms and stuff like that. We built little boats together and things like that. I learned how to manipulate and work with different materials. Can't say that we ever math.

It's amazing how those skills can come back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Be useful down the road, isn't it? Like everything you learn how to do, you wind up using.

You know, I don't think we ever mastered any one of them. I don't think we Ever mastered any one of them. But we sort of learned a lot. Yeah, but we, I mean, my birthday was putting up this brick wall behind us. That little faux brick wall was done on my birthday.

Wow.

Yeah. So, I mean, listen, my family was here helping. My family was in on this. And certainly I was going to say this earlier too. A lot of this I couldn't do without massive amounts of familial support from my wife to my mom, my stepdad, my dad is unfortunately not with us anymore. But tremendous amount of support that helps us get to and achieve the goals that obviously we wanted to achieve. So there's a lot of that too.

Now let's get into the actual nuts and bolts of getting started in your profession. The way professionals, they have an option that a lot of business you don't have. Therefore you can buy a practice, you can work there for a while maybe and you can take over a practice. Does that guarantee automatic success when you buy a practice?

No, it doesn't. I can tell you I had a failed experience. So when I first moved to Fort Lauderdale, I was.

Hey, Ty, don't feel bad, people love this.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I had a failed experience.

Everybody has failed experiences. They'll like you a lot better when they find out you had a failed.

Yeah, no, no, for sure. As soon as I moved to. I moved to Fort Lauderdale from Fort Myers. When I first moved to Fort, I was in Fort Myers where I did my residency. I worked there for about a year and a half before moving over to Fort Lauderdale. I moved to Fort Lauderdale because I had an opportunity to be an associate in a well known practice here in Fort Lauderdale. I'm not going to name names because it's not important, but I worked there for three years and the goal was when I started was to build the practice to a level where it could sustain both of us as practitioners and owners. And we did that in year three and he sold it from underneath me to corporation. So I. Long story short, it just. It wouldn't work out for us to come to an accord and become partners and do all that. So I decided to leave and buy my own practice. And that's when I bought Boy Beach.

Let's talk about that. When you're depending on the business you're in, you're having to interact more frequently. And when you're in that kind of situation in an office where you see people.

Yeah.

All every day and you hear them yak of the room. If. No offense to anyone, but if things don't click, I Mean, if you're not a match, you're not a click together. Orient.

Oh, they'll. People will see it right away, for sure.

You can't hide it. And it can't.

No.

Yeah.

No, no, you cannot.

I don't know if it's chemical, I don't know if it's the electric signal that we have, but if there's not a match, you gotta.

I mean, you really. Yeah, you're right. 100. And then, you know. But they get that again. I've been. There's gotta be. There's definitely some luck involved, too. Like, when I bought the Boyden practice, all the staff, everybody was just amazing. Like, I. I haven't had to do anything in terms of staff up there. A lot of them are staff from 35 years ago.

Yeah.

That have accepted me as the dentist and as. No, really, it's a family. It's the business family. And which is how. Obviously, how I have it at the brewery, too. We're here for each other. It's not just a business, it's not just a job. We run it as a family. And that seems to be what's successful for us. And what people, patients and patrons, what they see when they come in. It has a whole different field than a normal medical dental clinic, which is, I think, what speaks for itself.

Using your own words, I'm curious why you said I had a failed experience.

Well, it was a learning experience. How about that?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was a learning experience.

How long did it go on? And then what was your takeaway from that?

So again, about year three is when that happened. And then I stuck around with the corporation for about six or seven months because, again, at the end of the day, I didn't want to leave the patients in the practice high and dry. I just didn't think that was the right thing to do. So I stuck around for a little bit, did what they asked me to do and all that, but at the same time, I was looking for the.

You started looking?

Yeah, the practice that I wanted to have. And again, not easy to find. Trying to find a practice that wasn't completely insurance driven, didn't have corporate fingers in it and that kind of thing. So really, practice that I could run as, again, a family. And every one of my patients has my cell phone number. Anybody can reach me on the weekend. I mean, the kind of practice I always wanted to have is a very accessible practice that people felt comfortable calling. Some. Some people, especially new patients, they don't feel comfortable calling until I say no. That's what it's for. Call me anytime you have a problem.

Well, the point is that one. You were smart in how you went about it. And I like to point that out because sometimes we don't think about it is like when you find a situation, it's not going well.

Yeah.

Don't be in a hurry to make a move because you'd work your whole life. You get your education, you get the degrees, you get the credibility. And then you go out there, you get the experience, and you had a bunch of clients, you had a customer who had a good name. And the problem there, you realize this has got to change. I can't do forever. But not enough to like, blow it all up. It's like, take your time. When you move, make sure you've got something solid to move to.

Correct.

Don't give up everything in a temper tantrum or.

Correct. I thought about it, but I didn't.

I visualize you on a Friday afternoon with your hands around his throat, about ready to take. And he said, no, no, I'm not going to do this.

But anyway, you know what? Doing things the right way always works out for the better in the long run. So.

Yeah, but the thing is that the one of the things. If you're going to run a business, you can't let emotion drive you. And you're going to have to put up with some irritations. You're going to have to put. Because nobody's even.

Yes, yes. Big time, it's even.

The people that are perfect are not perfect all the time. So.

Oh, no, for sure not. I'm not perfect every. All the time. Nobody. Yeah.

So the deal is that you took your time to find. So. And you made an intelligent move. You made a logical move. You made. And that's the way you need to. We all need to move through life. We need to do our due diligence. We need to be smart enough to realize, look down the road, say, is this situation going to work for me or not? If it's. You reach a conclusion. It's not. You can shift up here.

Yep.

And that's what you did. And then it turned out the. The way you wanted. But it's not an accident. You said I'm very fortunate. Well, you're very fortunate because you went about it the way you went about it.

I agree with that for sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely a way to go about things. Even though something's disappointing or whatever, you got to evaluate and your brain. You're right. You got to make moves in your brain and again start looking for practices or whatever, you know, keep going. And again, the right thing to do is to stay there for the patients that I had and that time, tell them, hey, listen, this is what I'm doing. This is where we're going to be. And the good majority of them actually came up to Boynton, so. Which was good. So yeah, I can't really complain.

Pretty amazing. And the thing is that we go through these and I kind of point repoint these things, lessons out because we got to re. There's so many things for us to keep up with Ty and we have to make decisions. Boom, boom, boom. It's good to be reminded of this stuff. Like, okay, I remember that. I'll keep that in my.

Oh yeah.

And so how long was it before you got started in brewery? How long did it take before you actually had a product?

So we got this building, we leased it again, we didn't have the money at the time to buy the building, whatever. We leased it in 2016. There was a lot of stuff with the city. We had to rezone the building. So it was more difficult with alcohol establishments too. We were one of. I think we're the second or third. Third in Fort Lauderdale to open. So like the city didn't have a lot of knowledge and how to set up a brewery, how to make it stay, all that kind of stuff. So just everything took a lot of time. So we didn't actually open until August, September of 2018. So we had this building for two years, building it out, doing everything we had product and we went to like, we donated product to events and beer competitions and that kind of thing. But we were not able to sell a pint of beer until we opened. So it was a long, expensive two years to get open. Should have been tears.

Wow.

But we got there and again, have a goal, have a focus and figure out how to make it work. That's what we did.

Oh, it was going to take you two years?

No, guys, I had no idea. No, I thought maybe six months at the max. We actually had when we planned and released the building, we actually had about six month deferral on the lease to build out and get ready to go and that kind of thing and wait took a little longer than that. So.

Well now, so you get a product, you laid the groundwork out for sales, I guess before you actually could sell. How do you go about that? How do you know to do that? Did you come down here, know how to. When did you have the first idea I'm going to do this as a business.

Yeah. So it was pretty much when I graduated from dental school. I really enjoyed it. I mean, obviously at that point in time, it was a hobby.

Yeah.

And I knew, like, hey, this would be a fun thing to do on the side. Right. All right, let's kind of look at it. And, you know, I moved back to Seattle for a little bit and worked with my dad when he was still alive. And it kind of. I started doing a little more research and that kind of thing and ended up meeting my business partner at the time, and he and I were looking at either doing the brewery in Washington state, which is where we started doing a lot of our initial research and all that. But I didn't want to do dentistry in Washington state. So I was going to be the one that moved to Florida is the place where I did my residency. Wanted to hire me out of dental school, and I wanted to make the move. My dad had passed away, so it was like a good time for my wife and I to. To cut ties with Washington and move on.

Yeah.

So I was going to travel back to Washington and help him grow the business that way.

But.

But as soon as I moved down here and saw the need for the craft beer market down here versus in Washington state become very apparent that it should be down here.

Yeah. Versus there, like in Denver and Colorado, there's like a million craft beer. I know there were in. Up in Boston and you come down to Lauderdale and it's basically virgin territory, right?

Yeah. The desert. There's like. There's one. At that point in time when I first moved to one brewery in Fort Lauderdale property, and it was right down by the airport. So it was a natural fit, to be honest. And so I had my business partner fly out here and set up a couple meetings with breweries around the area. So one down in Miami, one up in Palm beach, and then we went to the one by the airport and I just let him talk, ask his question. I tried to stay out of it because obviously I'd give my biased opinion, so. And at the end of the whole thing, he's like, yep, this is the place where we need to do it. So he packed up shop in Vancouver, Washington, moved his whole family over to South Florida, and we opened this place together. And we didn't actually buy him out until my wife and I bought him out in 2022.

Really.

And so now it's my wife and I. But yeah.

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