Heroes in Business - Billy Busch, Founder of the Busch Family Brewing & Distilling Company, Heir to the Anheuser-Busch Multi-Billion-Dollar Fortune buschfamilyfarm.com

Episode Date: January 25, 2025

Billy Busch, Founder of the Busch Family Brewing & Distilling Company and an heir to the Anheuser-Busch multi-billion-dollar fortune. He is the Author of the book Family Reins. He is the proud father of seven children and stars with his wife in the MTV reality series The Busch Family Brewed. buschfamilyfarm.com

Welcome back to alliances heroes where heroes in business align to be part of our super community and find out more about alliances visit Www.alliances.com That's right. Well again so excited by the way. Thank you so much for the feedback We continue to have when I head on the founder of North Face So, you know where you can go to see past recordings Make sure that you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. The only place for Entrepreneurs Line. Well, I gotta tell you, I'm very thirsty and you're gonna find out why when you see the next hero we have coming on. Are you ready for this? You'll recognize him. You definitely will. You'll

know his brands. There are so many brands that he has and welcome to the show. You ready for this? Billy Bush. He is the founder of the Bush Family Brewing and Distilling Company and heir to the Anheuser-Busch multi-billion dollar fortune. He is the author of Family Reigns and make sure that you get his book Family Reigns on Amazon. Simply just type Family Reigns. You're going to want to make sure you do after this interview. So again, welcome to the show Billy. I'm excited to have you today. Thank you for having me on David. I really appreciate it. All right, so you wrote this book. First of all, let's just jump right into the book first

and stuff. Why write a book about, why write a book and what does the title Family Rains have to do with it? Family Rains, you know, it's spelled R-E-I-N-S. It's the reins that you hold in your hand when you're riding a horse or driving horses. So it was very appropriate because I come from a big equestrian family who founded

the Clydesdale eight horse hitch. And basically my family, my ancestors, they held reins in their hands when it came to the company, when it came to their family, and they steered the family and the company in the right direction. And that's how it became a dynasty in the beer business. Excellent. Now as heir to such a historic, I mean, I mean the world knows your, the world knows your brand and heir to such a historic and family fortune, what values or traditions

really did your family instill in you that you've carried into your own ventures? Well, I watched my father as he grew the business, you know, back in the 60s and 70s and even before then in the 50s. He actually started running Anheuser-Busch in 1946 and it was the during it during that time it was the time of Anheuser-Busch's greatest growth. I think they went from three million barrels to about 40 million barrels during his era of running the company. He ran it to 1975. So I watched how hard he worked. I watched how passionate he was about the business. I watched how he loved it and enjoyed every minute of it. He was a very sociable, gregarious guy. And he he made sure the quality always stood out on everything that he did, whether it was the products itself like Budweiser, whether it was the breweries, everything always had to be immaculate, whether it was our farm, Grant's Farm, which I grew up on and he opened to the public in 1954, or the Cardinal baseball team, or the theme parks like Busch Gardens that he built around the breweries that he was building around the country. Everything was always done

perfectly into perfection because he always understood that the customer, the people that would show up at these places or drink the beer, always would recognize the quality in everything he did with the company. And that stood out, that always stood out. And he worked very, very hard in order to make sure that that did. And he loved his employees and he took great care of them, was another thing that was very important. And he knew the beer business inside and out. He knew every department of the beer business.

He understood it. He built a great team around himself. He relied on himself to do that. And I think that's what made him such a great leader. Well, phenomenal. Now, also too, is in family reigns, you touch on the dynamics of family and business. How did being part of a brewing dynasty shape your approach really with raising your own family? Yeah, I think what it did with me is being part of a brewing dynasty gave me the opportunity to not have to work as hard as my father

and really be more involved with my kids as they were growing up. Christie, my wife and I have seven kids and we were able to spend much more time with them than my dad and mom spent with me and my brothers and sisters because they were always on the go. They were always busy. They were always working hard, entertaining and growing the business.

And because they left us financially sound, it made it very much easier for me to kind of pick and choose what needed to be done and give me the opportunity and the luxury to be with my kids. And, you know, but we, we still work hard. It's very important that, that I work hard, that I set that example of, of, of working hard and keeping things going because, you know, all good things come to an end. And that's what happened with Anheuser-Busch. We were a part of it until 2008 and then InBev, a company called InBev from Belgium came in and took it over and it went away and now we have to kind of keep things going on our own and you know because eventually if you just rely on the money you made in the past, it's gonna run out.

So we're a big family. we're a very close knit family, we're working on things together, whether it be the brewery that we have now on our farm and distributing beer from there, or whether it be our hotel in Miami, the book I've written, my son has a hunting gear apparel line a hunting gear apparel line that he has out online called Geist Gear, G-E-I-S-T, and you can find it on geistgear.com, which he's very involved in and that company is doing very

well and he's got hunting gear for all different hunters, whether you're a duck hunter or turkey or deer or whatever it may be, great, great items there that people can look at and purchase. So, you know, I've instilled that work ethic that I've learned from my father and ancestors. Absolutely phenomenal on stuff. In fact, too, you know, you mentioned about children, your family and how important they are. Tell us maybe one or two of the key secrets that you share with your children to be as successful as you have been. Well, I think it's important that they rely on themselves. They learn to rely on themselves. They can't trust everybody. They have to, you know, you get a little bit of a target on your back with that last name.

And so you have to learn that you really have to understand what you're getting into. You got to know your numbers. You've got to know what it is that you're, uh, what it is that you're doing and can't really rely on anyone else telling you how to do it. You have to figure it out yourself. Um, but at the same time, you have to build a strong team around you. And I try to instill that into my kids. I think they've instilled a lot into me too, and they've showed me, you know, at their

young ages, how important it is to, you know, to basically put your money into assets, not liabilities. And there are things out there that you can find different businesses that are going to really make it very, very tough on you to make it successful. So you got to think long and hard, do I want to put my money in the stock market where you can sit on it and see it do pretty darn well, especially like it's done in the last 10 or 15 years. Or do you want to get into the business that proves much, much more risky?

So you know, I think the the literacy of of money, understanding money, understanding how to how to invest things like that are very, very important. And we work together on trying to understand that the best we can. Great, great. And again, you're listening and watching to me, David Cogan, host of the Alliance's Hero Show, make sure that you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S dot com. The only place where entrepreneurs align. And again, we have with us Billy Bush,

founder of the Bush Family and Brewing and Distilling Company and heir to the Anheuser-Busch multi-million dollar fortune, author of Family Reigns, and you can find his book on Amazon. So make sure you go to amazon.com. Well, with that too, Billy, there are so many brands. I mean, you've got brands of Budweiser, Bud Light, Corona, Michelob, Ultra, Becks, and many others that I can't

pronounce. Let me ask you this challenging question. If you could choose one beer or spirit from your company to represent your life story, which one would it be and why? You're probably talking about our new company, if I'm not mistaken, David, the Bush Family Brewing and Distilling Company, not Anheuser-Busch. And I would have to say it would be, we have a Pilsner out there called the Adolphus. And one big thing that ran through my family and my ancestors was Adolphus who started Anheuser-Busch back in the 1800s was extremely incredible at what he did. He was a great businessman. He was also very gregarious. He was a great marketing mind and very innovative. You know, he came up with the refrigerated

railroad car. He invented that. He started. he was the first to pasteurize beer. And so now he could ship beer to further out places. And that's really what made Budweiser do so well. And not only that, but he also realized that people love to drink a smoother beer, especially in hot weather. And when a lot of ales were being produced at the time, he was the only one that produced a lager, which are generally more easy to drink and more palpable. So he became a legend in the family and it was passed down to

his son, my grandfather August Sr., and then to my uncle Adolphus, and then passed over to my dad, and it kept going another couple generations. But what I what I saw was and I saw it with my dad and I heard about it that my grandfather used it to they they always ask themselves during difficult and challenging times. What would it do? What would it do? And you know that still kind of resonates with me today. What would it do with all this ultra

competition now in the beer industry? There's so much competition like you said, heck, there's over 10, 000 breweries out there now and unfortunately, the beer drinker that doesn't have the appetite for beer that they

they used to. So, beer sales are down in general across the country. Um there's not nearly as much beer being drank now. People are looking at it, you know, for health reasons that say thinner, all that's very important to them. Gen Z's and millennials aren't drinking as much. And so it's a it's kind of a difficult time and not just the beer business, but the whole alcohol industry. And what would Adolphus do right now? And so I really look at the Adolphus Pilsner, which is to me, one of our finest beers.

It's got a great taste. It has a Germaness Pilsner taste, which I love. We still de-cocked, which is the second mash that we go through to make this beer. It's incredibly high quality. And it really honors my great grandfather very, very well. And I think, you know, that's what I would turn to, to remember my ancestors, especially my great grandfather Adolphus, is the Adolphus Pilsner.

Excellent. Absolutely phenomenal. Now, what about advice for entrepreneurs, for aspiring brewers or distillers who are looking look up to you as your journey of what's one piece of unconventional advice perhaps you'd give them about starting in the industry? Well, I'll tell you a lot of people want to start big and they want to you know, they want to get distribution quickly and they want to get it throughout, you know, and instead of going locally and then regionally and then nationally, they want to jump nationally right away. And I think it's a very tough hoda. It's very difficult to go that quickly. I think,

I think it's as hard as it may be, slow down, go a little slower, get it out there, test pilot your alcohol beverage, whatever that might be, make sure people like it, make sure people love the branding, make sure people love the liquid, and then you know, and then you try to, you're not gonna make a lot of money doing that right off the bat, but at least you won't lose that much money. And once you start seeing it selling, it's a lot easier to go to a distributor then and get the distributor to pick it up and really put it on the shelves in the retailer spots where people can really find it much easier than putting it on the bottom of the shelf or, you know, or on the very top where people don really find it much easier than putting it on the bottom of the

shelf or you know around the very top where people don't see it. So I just think that that's very, very important not to get over ambitious during this time because there's so many beers, there's so many products out there right now that you're competing with and see how it goes. Test pilot, test market it, and if it goes well, then keep expanding. Excellent. Well, Billy, thank you for being on the show. Billy Bush, you're making a difference in the world. You're helping so many. Founder of the Bush Family and Brewing and Distilling Company and heir to the Anheuser-Busch multi-billion dollar fortune author of Family Reins. After this interview, go ahead and go pick up the book, go to Amazon.com, continue to stay tuned because later on we're going to be having the President of the United Nations

General Assembly on, so make sure you stand by. Billy, it's been an honor having you on the show today. Thank you so much. But you gotta dance with me a little bit. Thank you, man. Give it. You gotta dance with me a little bit here.