It Is No Longer Just Good Enough To Be Just Good Enough.

Have you heard about the monks that brew the world’s best beer?

When master storyteller Pierre du Plessis first told me about the Trappist breweries, I pictured a haven in the mountains filled with rosy-cheeked monks that hold daily frat parties for their Holy brethren.

The truth, as Pierre related it, is even more interesting. There are currently thirteen beer-producing monasteries in existence, but the best beer in the world purportedly comes from a humble Abbey in Flanders.

The Westvleteren 12 from St Sixtus Abbey is reportedly so good that the 5000 cases made each year are sold out in a day. If you get wind of when the beer is ready you best be damned sure you get to the monastery on time. Then, you only get allocated a maximum of two cases. Their call centre (yup, apparently those happy monk folks have a call centre) gets up to 80,000+ calls an hour when the beer is flowing.

Basically: if you snooze, you lose your booze.

Heavy Chef’s Head of Learning Mo pointed me toward another group of happy folks obsessing about brewing beer. The company Brewdog in the UK has a transparency dashboard where they release information that would be sensitive to most businesses. They even publish their share of the market and their employee performance ratings.

Closer to home, one of our speakers in November’s Heavy Chef entrepreneur gathering Khanya Mncwabe, founder of Matawi Mead, is shaking things up in the local booze industry. Matawi is a lovingly purveyor of traditional mead, but they’re also bringing a real love for the environment to the liquor sector. Khanya and her crew of mead-makers really value tradition, craft and the planet.

Our long-time supporter Backsberg is also on the planetary podium with their Tread Lightly range of wines. Attendees of Heavy Chef events will recognize the super light wine bottles that we sometimes serve at the back of each session. Backsberg is obsessed with decreasing its carbon footprint and was one of the first wineries to openly advocate for climate-change awareness.

There is a pattern here.

Businesses with values convert to valuable businesses.

Something that has sunk in for me recently is that every business has values - even if we’re not aware of them. Values are revealed by behaviours.

If a business doesn’t have an official list of values, the quickest way to identify them is to look at that business’ behaviour. Look at how its team members behave. These behaviours reflect values, even if those values are not listed on a website page.

It may appear unimportant in the face of more pressing problems, but we should not ignore it. If we let it slide, our values will be written for us - in the form of complaint emails or posted on social media channels.

Heavy Chef’s own values are published publicly on our ingredients page. For realz, Heavy Chef values you, the humble (and ambitious) entrepreneur. We want to inspire and empower you to success.

Our values dictate what sort of people will be compelled to join our teams. Our values help us to select partners. Our values dictate what sort of customers we attract. Our values will determine how many return.

Jim Collins’ magnum opus from 2021 BE.2.0. Collins lists people and values as the two highest predictive factors for success in business.

It is no longer just good enough to be just good enough.

We need to think hard about what aspects of life we value. In return, our people, customers and communities will value us for those aspects.

See you at our next entrepreneur gathering on the 20th October. We won’t have Westvleteren 12, but there will be great wine, waters and smoothies. There will also be two truly great guest speakers. Robyn Smith, founder of Faithful to Nature, and Khanya will be talking about (you guessed it) values.

Until then,

Peace.