In this episode of Executive Evolution, Craig Anderson sits down with Dan Fahrner, founder and CEO of Shake Up Cocktails and Hi & Mighty Distillery. From touring the country in a van with his band to leading a fast-growing canned cocktail brand, Dan shares how his leadership style evolved across wildly different stages of life. He reflects on lessons from working with creatives, managing part-time ambassadors across multiple states, and building a company around inspiration rather than control. He and Craig explore how casting a clear vision, pivoting with purpose, and aligning team incentives have been key to scaling with intention.
After You Listen:
Things to listen for:
(00:00) Intro
(00:21) Lessons from leadership in a call center
(01:55) Dan’s leadership insights
(06:56) The privileges and challenges of leadership
(14:30) Building Shake Up Cocktails
(19:36) Adapting and pivoting in business
(23:58) Managing a part-time workforce
(28:02) The importance of enjoying the process
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
[00:00:00] Craig P. Anderson: The employee looked at me and said, I didn't think I could even do that job, so I never even thought about applying. Welcome to Executive Evolution. I have over 25 years of leadership experience in corporate America. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, and I created this podcast so that you won't have to.
[00:00:21] Craig P. Anderson: One of the really interesting things about the last larger business that I ran, it was a call center business and call center jobs tend to be entry-level jobs. And one of the real privileges I had in that position was seeing people who had opportunities to grow beyond that role. And I will never forget a conversation I had with one of those teammates where we had an opening kind of outside of the call center, but still a phone related job, business development rep job, and I.
[00:00:47] Craig P. Anderson: We posted those and I really thought he'd be good for that role, but I didn't even see him applying for the role and I had pulled him aside and shared with him kind of, you know, this is something I see in you. I see this ability to actually move into this role. It's a little risky. There's incentive sides to it, but I really think this is a place you could excel.
[00:01:05] Craig P. Anderson: And he looked me in the eye and just said, I don't even think I could do that. I didn't think I could even do that job. And so I never thought to apply and I really encouraged him to do so. And he did, and he did well in that role. So one of the real privileges of leadership is being able to help people grow, and that's one of the stories that come up in my interview today with Dan Farhner, who is the founder and CEO of Shake Up Cocktails.
[00:01:27] Craig P. Anderson: So let's jump in right now and hear the story of his executive evolution. Dan, welcome to the Executive Evolution podcast. I'm so glad you could be here today. Thanks, Craig. Great to be here. Thank you. Yeah, we, it's great. We, we did a lot of work together in the past and, uh, I'm really excited to hear about all the things you've got going on with Shake Up and, and how that's happened for you over the last few years.
[00:01:49] Craig P. Anderson: Excellent. Can't wait to share. Absolutely. And it's great to reconnect. Yes, absolutely. Let's jump in. Are you ready for the lightning round, Dan? I'm ready, baby. Alright. Lightning round. Question one, what is the best leadership book you have ever read?
[00:02:04] Dan Farhner: Yeah. Best leadership book for me has to be shoe dog.
[00:02:08] Dan Farhner: Which is, uh, memoir. By Phil Knight, the, uh, founder of Nike. It's very much a narrative driven story, but so many phenomenal leadership lessons. Really. It's a great startup book because he, he built the business from nothing, like literally just selling shoes out of his car. Went to this gigantic business, you know, global business, including being one of the first US companies selling abroad in China, things like that.
[00:02:37] Dan Farhner: But you know, he's just got a fun, unique, quirky attitude and great, great lessons all around. Love that book.
[00:02:43] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. He always seems to be like one of those kind of larger than life leaders, kinda like Richard Branson, where there's just so much and they don't seem to take themselves super seriously, but the business really seriously.
[00:02:54] Craig P. Anderson: And I don't know if that's Phil Knight, but that seems like him to me. No, absolutely. You're
[00:02:59] Dan Farhner: you're very
[00:02:59] Craig P. Anderson: much correct in that. All right. Question number two, who is your leadership crush?
[00:03:07] Dan Farhner: Yeah. Leadership Crush, uh, is a local fellow that you know well, Craig, his name's Jeb Banner. The reason I bring him up, he's actually a, a mentor of mine, somebody that I worked for many years ago when Craig and I worked together.
[00:03:22] Dan Farhner: He just has some really unique qualities individually that I think are just aspirational from a leadership standpoint. For one, he's just a, a phenomenal, uh, human, fantastic mentor. Number two, he's just a great business mind. So he's somebody that understands kind of all aspects of the, of businesses, building them from scratch, from almost nothing to, you know, fundraising, to scaling, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:03:48] Dan Farhner: But then the last aspect of him as a person, which I think is just. Very phenomenal aspirational is that on the personal side, he is very spiritual. He would define himself as a Christian, but he just, uh, he has a, a very unique ethos and it allows him to seemingly balance his work life in just kind of a perfect way.
[00:04:07] Dan Farhner: And so I. All that to say, um, I'm grateful for all the lessons that he taught me, but you know, there's a lot that I still need to learn. And so a lot of his, his style and that kind of like that balance is something that I aspire to grow in as well. Yeah. I
[00:04:20] Craig P. Anderson: actually have had Jeb on the podcast. He was one of the early guests, and I think I.
[00:04:26] Craig P. Anderson: In all the work I've done with him in connection with him over the years, it's kind of that balance and calm, right. And I always talk at the end of this, that podcast about confidence, competence, and calm is crucial. Leadership characteristics. Mm-hmm. And he manages to just kind of perspective, which isn't a word.
[00:04:41] Craig P. Anderson: In a way that's just really unique. I think he's just you and a great serial entrepreneur. Never doesn't have an idea for something cool.
[00:04:48] Dan Farhner: Absolutely. He's always working on something wacky and you know, right now it's ai. In the past it was music he and I met through the music community and, and playing music and concert promotion.
[00:05:00] Dan Farhner: So, you know, it's, it runs the gamut for sure. Absolutely. All right,
[00:05:04] Craig P. Anderson: cool. Last one. In 10 words or less, how do you define leadership?
[00:05:10] Dan Farhner: Yeah, I think this is gonna be less than 10. Inspiring others to be great. Couple aspects of that for me, the inspirational piece. I mean, I think that most folks in a leadership role know that I.
[00:05:24] Dan Farhner: The active management can be challenging, tedious, frustrating, like interpersonal relationship management is very difficult. It's hard to do. So you know, obviously there's kind of two ways you, two paths you can go down. F1 is like more of a positive. The other is more of a negative. On the positive side, you've got.
[00:05:44] Dan Farhner: Inspiration, inspiring others. Positive reinforcement. The negative side is where, you know, you're using negative reinforcement, you know, being critical shaming, what have you. You know, and I spent many years working as a leadership coach, and oftentimes you could see where the breakdown exists in an organization due to, you know, those management styles.
[00:06:06] Dan Farhner: And a lot of it has to do with, you know, individuals and how happy or satisfied or fulfilled they are in their own lives. So anyway. Inspiration over negativity. And then to be great, you know, like obviously we wanna push people to grow to excel in their roles and things like that. And so oftentimes you have to figure out, okay, what motivates them, right?
[00:06:28] Dan Farhner: Mm-hmm. What's the motivational aspect? So how can you inspire them to kinda reach beyond whatever their perceived ceiling is? And so to me, it's important to use that positivity to inspire and then also to help people kind of. Reach beyond what they believe their perceived ceiling is. Not just in the workplace, but in life as well.
[00:06:48] Dan Farhner: And so, you know, to me there's, again, speaking back to the balance that we just described, that's really, really important. So that's my answer. I'm sticking with it.
[00:06:57] Craig P. Anderson: No, I love that because one of the things like in the last bigger business I ran, you know, was a largely a call center business. And one of the things that was so cool is you got to know those folks.
[00:07:07] Craig P. Anderson: And obviously very entry level job, but you could start to see in people what they could actually do beyond just sitting on those phones. Mm-hmm. And start talking to them about, you know, I could see you doing this, I could see you here. How do we help you get there? And that's such a huge, like, privilege of leadership.
[00:07:23] Craig P. Anderson: It's not all privilege talk. Sometimes it's exhausting. It's like juggling bowling balls. But when you can do stuff like that where you're actually like changing a life in, in a positive way, that's also by the way, beneficial for the business. Yeah. That's really cool. It's super fulfilling. Absolutely.
[00:07:39] Craig P. Anderson: That's the win-win. It is, yeah. It's one of the, it's really what actually made me, when I, when we ended up selling that business, why I went this way and moved into kinda like business coaching and leadership coaching. Mm-hmm. Because that's what I was enjoying, was helping lift people up. Not growing. I mean, growing the business is fun, but actually changing people's lives is actually a much more interesting thing to do every day.
[00:08:00] Craig P. Anderson: So, oh, absolutely. And added value to the world at the same time. Alright, so let's go back, Dan. Not today, but what do you consider to be the first leadership role you've ever had?
[00:08:11] Dan Farhner: Honestly, the first leadership role I ever had was probably when I was a performing starving artist, musician, touring the country.
[00:08:20] Dan Farhner: Right. When I graduated college, I went through the entrepreneurship program at Ball State University here in Indiana.
[00:08:25] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah.
[00:08:26] Dan Farhner: And Muncie, Indiana and had to write a business plan in order to graduate, and you had to sell it. Um, there was no financial aspect to it, no money exchange, but you had to go through the entire process.
[00:08:36] Dan Farhner: It was pass fail. So when I finished the process, I was grilled for a couple hours in the business plan presentation portion, and afterwards they asked me, so are you gonna start this business? Which was actually, it's, it was an electronic medical records system. Service, not something I had a ton of interest in, but something I had some background in.
[00:08:55] Dan Farhner: And they said, are you gonna start this business? And I said, I think I'm gonna go on tour with my band. So interestingly enough, I moved down to Indianapolis into a house on Butler University's campus with my band mates. And we literally spent about three years touring the country. I learned so much about leadership from that.
[00:09:13] Dan Farhner: I mean, we were roommates, we were living, you know, slipping on people's floors, living in a van together, eating meals together, and it wasn't every day of every year. But you know, that's, we were united by that and we were a team, right? We had our individual roles. Um, I was, you know, manager, booking agent, business guy, I guess you could say Band dad.
[00:09:33] Dan Farhner: We had, uh, you know, a songwriter. That was his primary focus. We had a couple creatives who would help with marketing and et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, just trying to figure out how to like kinda run the business portion was just very challenging. Also, working with creatives, people who are like uber creative.
[00:09:50] Dan Farhner: Yet, you know, we were what, 21, 22 years old, so not necessarily fully emotionally developed at that time, my spot, myself included. And so there were just tons and tons of conflict as you can imagine being in such close quarters and, and just so many lessons. And to the point where, you know, I think I burned myself out pretty quickly, truly because I took it so seriously and I was pushing so hard and, uh, I wasn't inspiring others to be great as we just discussed.
[00:10:21] Dan Farhner: I was dictating or demanding and expecting and, and obviously it didn't work. You know, that was my first kind of big leadership role and pretty unique, different but so many learning experiences, um, as part of it.
[00:10:35] Craig P. Anderson: Well, and I think that's interesting 'cause in some ways, you know, with a smaller business that's growing right, it does almost feel like a family.
[00:10:41] Craig P. Anderson: Maybe you're not all sleeping in a van together and traveling in the country, but you are spending a ton of time together. Yeah. Don't worry. Yeah. But your style, so like what did you take away within that from kind of both that pro leading with that proximity? And kind of also just being thrust into it because that was kind of the default.
[00:11:01] Craig P. Anderson: Well, if you're the book, you know, the, the agent guy, you were thrust into it. So like what were some of the big takeaways of what made that work and didn't work?
[00:11:09] Dan Farhner: Yeah. You know, I think one of the biggest things was like, uh, touring for us was a means to. You know, creating, building awareness, right? Like there were social media and like internet tools that were being developed at the time or, or, you know, helping propel us on the digital side.
[00:11:27] Dan Farhner: But those were still pretty relatively new and you know, there were only certain demographics that would use it. So, you know, in order to kind of get in front of people and, you know. Actually make money. You had to be out on the road performing and so, so then you kind of walk backwards from that and think, all right, what has to happen in order for us to be out on the road?
[00:11:48] Dan Farhner: For this much amount, you know, for this amount of time. First things first, you know, you have to have paying gigs, but do the gigs actually pay for the entire tour? You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Secondly, you know, we have to, um, have our kind of like basic needs met financially, you know, like thinking about paying rent and, um, insurance and for food and things like that.
[00:12:11] Dan Farhner: And so, you know, ish. The gigs weren't necessarily paying for our entire livelihood. Then we had to find flexible jobs that would allow us to go on tour and come back and work and that kind of thing. And so then, you know, that takes this step further, like, all right, so I guess for me it was thinking.
[00:12:30] Dan Farhner: Through like how to make sure that everybody on the team in the band had the ability to have that flexibility and then also prioritize what we were doing, you know, as like kind of their primary focus. Right. So it was like, yeah. Inspiring. You know, making sure that people felt inspired our, our people felt inspired by what we were doing constantly, right?
[00:12:51] Dan Farhner: Things like showing and telling them, like, you know, the wins that we're having, like from a marketing standpoint or, you know, like if we're being played on the radio, making a big deal out of that. You know, so all kinds of things here. Like, you know, there's like kind of like that logistical aspect where it was like, if I'm Vanda, I need to make sure that.
[00:13:11] Dan Farhner: We have a house or living a living situation that we can all afford. So that's like thinking about people on a personal level, right? And then, you know, inspiring them to like bring their greatest to each show, each recording, each rehearsal, that kind of thing. So, you know, there's a lot of positive reinforcement that has to go into that.
[00:13:31] Dan Farhner: So just all kinds of interesting stuff.
[00:13:35] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. That's crazy. So if you had to kind of nail like the one thing I. That you really still use today from that experience, what do you think it would be? Um, I think it would be
[00:13:49] Dan Farhner: like probably treating my team as though they're like family. Part of the challenge with leadership is that you have to manage expectations constantly, right?
[00:14:03] Dan Farhner: Yeah. And set expectations constantly, but. If you're doing it from a position of I care for you, I care about you, it comes across as more genuine and then the relationship is a two-way relationship. And it's not just a, Hey, you're doing this for me, kind of thing. So to me that's probably the biggest thing and I still use that today.
[00:14:24] Dan Farhner: And I would say that, you know, that still works wonders for me at least.
[00:14:28] Craig P. Anderson: Alright, well so let's talk more about today. So today you've got Shake Up Cocktails, Hi & Mighty Distillery. You founded this about three or four years ago, how does your leadership style, and you've had obviously a lot of leadership opportunities in between, so you know, how has your leadership style evolved from back then?
[00:14:47] Dan Farhner: That's a great question. You know, I'll show you here. This is an example of our, of our product. Uh, yes. Lemon Shake Up King cocktail. So we started, uh, a distillery at the Indiana State Fairgrounds here in Midtown, Indianapolis. We launched the brand in 2022, launched the uh, lemon Shake Up can cocktail, which is kind of a classic fair, county fair, state, fair flavor.
[00:15:11] Dan Farhner: Um, we put it into a can and mixed it with a locally made gin that we make, and it is dynamite. We use all real stuff. And so you kind of taste the difference. And so when people tried it. We launched it at the fair in 2022. It just took off in a way that we couldn't have expected at that time. I was part-time.
[00:15:28] Dan Farhner: In fact, I would say that this January here in 2025 was both my wife and I took our first paycheck from the business, which is very exciting. Oh wow. Um, yes. Yeah, I bet it's a labor of love for sure. Um. But, you know, I, I had been working consulting and, you know, flexibility, you know, just like I described with the band, you know?
[00:15:48] Dan Farhner: Mm-hmm. That has occurred here in this business. Anyway, I give that context just so people kind of have a, a, an understanding of what the business looks like. There's three founding partners, and maybe one of the first ways that I had brought some of those leadership lessons from early on into this business is that when we set out to start the business, we knew pretty quickly that.
[00:16:10] Dan Farhner: We could probably manage, and this is my wife and I, I should say, we knew we wanted to go into business together. We worked very well together. We've, you know, had the, the most challenging leadership lesson there is, which is parenting and raising four boys. We have four kids and four years, and so we learned a lot there.
[00:16:27] Dan Farhner: Anyway, we knew that when we wanted to start the business, we had the ability to probably build the business, build the brand, kinda launch the logistical aspects of it. However. The most important thing was the product, the end product. Because obviously if people try it and it's not very good, they're not gonna buy it again.
[00:16:46] Dan Farhner: Right? Um, or they're not gonna buy it the first time. Right. So we knew that that was incredibly important. It sounds obvious, but you wouldn't believe how many brands in our space exist and their product is just mediocre or frankly, not very good. Anyway, in order to do that, we had needed to have somebody who really could bring their A game to.
[00:17:06] Dan Farhner: Flavor development, and so we kinda looked around our network and sure enough, we had a friend that we had met and worked with over the course of 10 years through church. Actually, his background is in food and restaurants, so opening restaurants, I. Running kitchens like Petit Chew and Broad Bull. He was the number two at the Chu Company for about five years before COVID.
[00:17:28] Dan Farhner: So we contacted him and just said, Hey, here's kinda what we're considering. This is something you'd ever be interested in helping with. You know, not like, Hey, we want you to be our partner, like full-time, but you might be able to contribute and we can kind of see how it goes. And he was like, immediately was like.
[00:17:44] Dan Farhner: Yeah, I'm in like, well, hang on. I'm like, don't you wanna like think about this? And I think he was pretty burned out on the restaurant world, but, you know, like, you know, treating people like family, you know, so this is somebody who we've known for a very long time, and obviously there are risks with that, which is that like, you know, if, if the bridge gets burned, it's deep because this is somebody that you've known have personal relationship with for a very long time.
[00:18:09] Dan Farhner: But I believe that. This entire business, all of the kind of individual steps that led us up to starting it were very divine. And so, you know, he was put in our life for a reason. He said yes for a reason. And so wouldn't you know it, it turns out that he's our secret weapon. Right? And not only is he phenomenal at what he does on the flavor development side, because we have a product that people absolutely love and are buying over and over constantly.
[00:18:39] Dan Farhner: But he also is a really sharp guy and built our distillery. He's also great at sales. So it's like, you know, if you can find people and inspire them, they can do great things. And so I'm not saying that that's like, you know, something that I wake up every day and know exactly what to do. But I think that we found a method that works for us, and especially with people that.
[00:19:03] Dan Farhner: Match our values and, and here we are.
[00:19:06] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. And, and you know, one of the things, when I hear the story and you know, you had such a clear vision, right? We're gonna have all natural flavors where, you know, all these things that you talked about, casting a clear vision to me is one of the crucial things for any business, right?
[00:19:18] Craig P. Anderson: You can inspire people all day long, but you're inspiring them to a vision. And if that's not clear, how do they know what, where they're going? So what were the steps for you kind of in the early days to say, all right, this is really. You know the business we're gonna create. What helped you drive into that really focused vision?
[00:19:35] Dan Farhner: Oh, great question. It's interesting too, because the vision has changed pretty dramatically, which tends to happen in startups, but I think at the beginning we employed quite a bit of like vision casting exercises. You and I in the past have gone through some of those exercises when we worked together, and so.
[00:19:53] Dan Farhner: We use some of those to kind of like collectively make sure that between the three of us, we were very well aligned in what we were building. Right? And we had a pretty clear vision, which at the time when we were building this was we are going to build a destination distillery, bar, restaurant experience.
[00:20:12] Dan Farhner: And we ended up partnering with Indiana State Fair because. They actually have about 2 million people that come through their gates in terms of foot traffic per year. Not quite half of that is the Indiana State Fair, which is about three weeks in August. The rest, I mean, there are events there constantly, so the idea was, okay, we can build a place.
[00:20:32] Dan Farhner: We have existing foot traffic. All we have to do then is pull in. Right. So we worked together through creative exercises just to make sure we were aligned to do that and we were meeting constantly. So it's so much communication, right? However, once we launched the CAN cocktail, we realized very quickly that this is the future of the business.
[00:20:54] Dan Farhner: It's not a place. And interestingly enough, economically at the time in 2021, interest rates were skyrocketing and it become, became much harder to borrow. Money from banks if you're pre-revenue. You know, it just kind of, the vision changed and then we had to go through that process again. We launched products.
[00:21:16] Dan Farhner: We found that we may have a product that may be able to scale for us, and so then we decided, and this is again, through working together like very closely in using some EOS practices, like on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis to. Essentially reformat the business around the product and not necessarily the distillery.
[00:21:38] Dan Farhner: So today we have a distillery. It is not open to the public, but it is a giant warehouse. It is filled with king cocktails. It can be a very fun place to hang out, but it's not a bar. And so, um, I'm very grateful to not be running a bar and, you know, having to worry about staffing in that same way. But this business has all kinds of challenges worth it too.
[00:21:58] Dan Farhner: So anyway, hopefully that
[00:22:00] Craig P. Anderson: helps. No, it does. And what's so cool about that and, and, you know, I talk a lot to people about, you know, make the decision to go because we can get into this whole like. Paralysis by analysis and try and get to the perfect beast. And what's important is just get to the point where you can go get enough, pull as much data together and go and start moving down the path.
[00:22:20] Craig P. Anderson: And then what I really appreciate about the story is you got to a point and you realized, you know what? We're banging up into a wall. This isn't gonna work. Now I have new information and I'm gonna take that in and I'm gonna make the pivot. Right? Yeah. So, so much is important is to say, take the action.
[00:22:36] Craig P. Anderson: But as soon as you start to realize that maybe there's. A flaw in that action. Don't be so, you know, egotistical or convinced that you're always right to not say, Hey, you know what, I think one of our assumptions was flawed. Let's try this. And made that, that pivot. Right, absolutely. And I can imagine the issues you deal with today, I'm sure are not zero, but the amount of issues, if you had a full run bar, restaurant, and.
[00:23:02] Craig P. Anderson: You know, dozens more employees and all that. It would be a very different business with very different challenges. Especially now when things are such a strong roll. Absolutely.
[00:23:11] Dan Farhner: I think that we would've had a much lower ceiling to, as a business if, and also then you're just focusing on driving foot traffic individuals constantly.
[00:23:19] Dan Farhner: Whereas, and now in our world it's, you know, how how big can we scale this nationally to the point where, you know, there may be portfolio brands who are interested in. You know, bringing us into their portfolio that, you know, we have, we have options. Right. Which I'm grateful to say, but, but to your point, yes.
[00:23:36] Dan Farhner: I think that no matter what, there's risks in being conservative and sticking with your, with your original plan. There's risks in pivoting, but I've always kind of been under the assumption that like with new information, as you said, you gotta go for it. And, you know, obviously weigh the risks. But don't be afraid to make a big pivot.
[00:23:57] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. And, and one other thing, and you mentioned this I think before we started recording, is, so a lot of your business is kind of not full-time people. You kind of have this army of people who are kind of ambassadors for your brand and do different things From a leadership perspective. I, I think almost like with a not-for-profit too, you have kind of this vast number of people who are doing things for you who may not be full-time.
[00:24:16] Craig P. Anderson: How do you kind of take that vision and that inspiration to greatness? To people who aren't necessarily in your office all day, every day, where you can really interact like that. How do you kind of press that vision forward? Yeah, that's
[00:24:29] Dan Farhner: a great question and certainly we're still learning on that front, but, um, we have about 30 part-time folks who help us as what we call brand ambassadors who are out on the front lines as I am.
[00:24:43] Dan Farhner: I'm more focused on the sales side, working directly with accounts that would be like liquor stores, bars, and restaurants. These folks are. Running events for us, interfacing with consumers, so they're in liquor stores, sampling out products, they're, you know, at Beer Fest, you know, sampling products, you know, you name it.
[00:25:02] Dan Farhner: We've got, I mean, this year at this point, we're tracking to do somewhere around 500 plus events across Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. And so not only is there a challenge in like. Keeping people motivated locally, but also then like people who are, we're not even, we don't even see them, you know, in Illinois and in Wisconsin.
[00:25:24] Dan Farhner: Right. And that is challenging, right? I, I can't say that we have it figured out 100%. There are some models that other brands use that are kind of tried and true on the logistics side, but the motivation is definitely challenging. Money does help. Right? If you can pay people well, it helps them feel valued and that's very important.
[00:25:43] Dan Farhner: I. And what we've done, I think that is maybe a little unique, is we've built in some incentives to the ambassador program where, let's just use kind of a more classic example. We've got somebody who in a total wine, doing a sampling from three to six on Friday. Um, and so. They get paid x dollar amount per hour just to kind of do that, you know, run that activity.
[00:26:08] Dan Farhner: However, we've also built in incentives that if they go above and beyond on the sales side, they get bonused. So if they sell over two cases of product, which would be about 12 four packs, they get a financial bonus. Yes. If they talk to the manager and relay some information back to us, that is really valuable.
[00:26:30] Dan Farhner: Boom. They get bonus. If they merchandise the shelves for us, so like clean up the shelf, make sure that, you know, all of our products are as presentable as possible. They get bonused if they, uh. Bring in email addresses for us. Yeah, they get bonus. So we have all these bonuses in place and most folks at this point, they're going for it completely because if they're out there spending their time, they might as well, you know, try and hit, hit the full bonus amount.
[00:26:59] Dan Farhner: And that helps. And obviously, you know, pay is not everything but it. Incentivizes them not only to like work harder, go above and beyond, but to kinda like think bigger picture about the business. Right? And so for us, these email addresses are valuable because it allows us to stay in touch with folks. I.
[00:27:15] Dan Farhner: They can buy our products online or through our website, and one of the main drivers of that is email address. So, you know, it makes a lot of sense. Our relationships with these accounts is incredibly valuable. So if it's not just me or our sales manager talking with a buyer, but also they realize that the brand ambassador who's out there doing sampling cares about their business, then boom, like, you know, that's adding value.
[00:27:40] Dan Farhner: So our whole goal is to add value to our, to our customers, and we can do that. If we're treating our people well,
[00:27:47] Craig P. Anderson: we're paying them well, et cetera. Well, and you've aligned their interest with your interest, right? Collecting email addresses, making sure the product's presentable, pushing the pro, right? All those things are ways to get people aligned, even though they're in Wisconsin or we're, you know, far, far away and maybe you've never met you in person.
[00:28:01] Craig P. Anderson: That's great. Yep. Well, Dan, we always like to kinda wrap up executive evolution with one question. You get to jump in a time machine, HG Wells. Mm-hmm. Back to the future, whatever your preferred method of time travel is. Go back to you in that first leadership role, what's the one piece of advice you would give yourself that would've made it easier, made you better, helped, helped you advance things faster?
[00:28:25] Craig P. Anderson: What's the one thing you'd go back and share? Oh man, I've got a really good
[00:28:29] Dan Farhner: one that's like, I'm still so challenged by. Enjoy the process. And don't just focus on the future and the outcomes so much. It's really hard to in business, but I'll liken it back to my band experience. Recording an album is a very unique experience.
[00:28:52] Dan Farhner: It's challenging in that like, you know, there's this like kind of pressure on the performance side. You know, I am a drummer, so for me it was like, you gotta get the perfect take, right? You gotta make sure that your band mates are kind of doing the same thing, that they're in it, in the same way that you are.
[00:29:08] Dan Farhner: They're focused, right? You know, you gotta make sure you're getting good sleep, you're. Relationship with your engineer is, is dynamite. So there's just a lot that goes into it. Even, you know, the sonic qualities, all the technology, et cetera, et cetera. For me, back then it was, we need to finish this album so we can get out on tour and make money.
[00:29:29] Dan Farhner: Whereas I would tell myself today, Hey, focus on making the best album you possibly can. Do whatever it takes to make the beer taste better. Everything else will fall in line from that. It's not like you ha your work is done if you make a great album, but if you don't make a great album, your work is done.
[00:29:49] Dan Farhner: You know you're not going very far. So you might as well just focus on enjoying the process and doing the absolute best you can. And so today in my work. There's so much that you know, I'm focused on. It's the version of creating an album today is either creating a new product or launching a brand campaign or what have you.
[00:30:12] Dan Farhner: And so oftentimes it's like, all right, we need to get this launched so that we can do X. Right? But in reality, I'm gonna look back at this time, and I'm not gonna remember what the urgent goal was that I was focused on. I'm gonna remember. Like, you know, what it is that we were building. And so I just wanna want to be able to, to focus on that and enjoy the process.
[00:30:35] Craig P. Anderson: It's so funny you say that 'cause what just flashed in my mind is, you know, I look back at like a 25 year career and I know, and I was stressed out all the time because I didn't enjoy the process. Yes. Right. Because it was just Right. I was so worried about the outcomes. Yes. But now as I look back on it, what I remember was.
[00:30:54] Craig P. Anderson: The team coming together. You know, the people who supported each other, the victories that we had, right. The cool crazy moments. That's the stuff that you actually take with you from these experiences. So why not? I know. Try to enjoy the ride. Love it. Yeah. Well, so Dan, if people want to know more about you, more about the company, where can they find you online?
[00:31:16] Dan Farhner: Sure, yeah. DrinkShakeUp.com is our website. You will find all kinds of fun info about our products. You can buy them online, you can find events, et cetera that may be close to you. We're very active on social media, so at Drink Shake Up is, you know, your account on Twitter on. Instagram on TikTok, wherever you like to hang out on social.
[00:31:41] Dan Farhner: That's probably the best ways to, best way to find us. Uh, I'm the primary person behind our social media, so if you ever wanna reach out, you know, I'm the one that's gonna say hi on the other side, so, um, feel free to.
[00:31:53] Craig P. Anderson: Perfect. Well, Dan, thanks so much for coming on, sharing the story of your executive evolution and best of luck as you guys continue to grow.
[00:32:01] Craig P. Anderson: Thank you, Craig. Appreciate it. Thanks everybody. Boy, I really enjoyed my interview with Dan today. You know, I hadn't seen him in several years. Brought him onto the podcast and he's had a lot of success with this business that he's launched, and I was so excited to hear the story of that and kind of how he's grown.
[00:32:18] Craig P. Anderson: As a leader over his career, especially in kind of this startup founder environment. So let's jump into the three takeaways in the areas of confidence, competence, and calm, and Dan's story in the area of confidence. He talked about creating a vision, and that's really important when we're creating our business, is we wanna have a vision.
[00:32:37] Craig P. Anderson: I take my clients through building a very specific vision that's either three to five years out. The thing is though, is Dan got in new information. That they didn't have at the time of the vision. He realized he needed to pivot or the company, and he and the company realized they needed to pivot. And that's confidence realizing that, you know, we're executing as well as we can on this vision, but when we're presented with new information, we're not gonna be so arrogant or so stubborn to say, well, we're gonna ignore that and keep plowing forward.
[00:33:01] Craig P. Anderson: Although I see a lot of people who do that and they took that new information and saw a better direction, and they pursued that direction and adjusted the vision accordingly. So that takes a lot of confidence for you as a leader. In the area of competence, I wanna highlight what they've discovered in kind of this part-time workforce that they have of aligning incentives with the behavior that they want to see, which isn't really something new.
[00:33:23] Craig P. Anderson: But what I think was really important was the very specific nature of how they kind of said, these are the things we wanna see. We wanna collect email addresses, we wanna get the product really presented well on shelves, and then actually built an incentive system to help those people move along. So if you're building your business that way, how are you really ensuring that your incentive programs are aligned with where you want to go?
[00:33:45] Craig P. Anderson: And make sure that all of that's aligned with the vision of where you wanna be as a business. And then in the area of calm, a lesson that I thought was great to go back and tell his younger self of. Enjoy and appreciate the process when we're so deep in, it can kind of be, you know, we're so worried about this stressful moment and that stressful moment, but there's a lot of joy in the learning and the growth.
[00:34:06] Craig P. Anderson: And I'm really glad Dan brought that to the fore because that's such an important lesson for us to help us maintain our calm by realizing it is a process. And we're gonna look back on this and see the lessons learned as value. So thanks again, Dan, for sharing the story of your executive evolution. It was so good to hear and back and to reconnect with you.
[00:34:22] Craig P. Anderson: So remember, you can go from being an accidental leader to the greatest leader of all time. All it takes is developing your confidence, competence, and Cobb. See you next time on Executive Evolution.