Quench Your Own Thirst - by Jim Koch (Paperback)

About the Book

Founder of The Boston Beer Company, Samuel Adams brewer, & catalyst of American craft beer, Jim Koch tells all when it comes to business, beer, & turning your passion into a successful company.

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER and named a 2016 Best Book of the Year by Inc., Business Insider, and Forbes

Founder of The Boston Beer Company, brewer of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and a key catalyst of the American craft beer revolution, Jim Koch offers his unique perspective when it comes to business, beer, and turning your passion into a successful company or career.

"Boston Beer's Jim Koch offers readers a six-pack of wisdom." - The Boston Globe

Pull up a chair and crack open a Sam Adams. It's time to leave behind business as you know it.

Quench Your Own Thirst covers everything from finding your own Yoda to Koch's theory on how a piece of string can teach you the most important lesson you'll ever learn about business. Koch also has surprising advice on sales, marketing, hiring, and company culture. His anecdotes, quirky musings, and bits of wisdom go far beyond brewing. A fun, engaging guide for building a career or launching a successful business, Quench Your Own Thirst is the key to the ultimate dream: being successful while doing what you love. So, are you quenching you own thirst - or someone else's?

"Like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and the other greats, Jim Koch's entrepreneurial journey is motivated by a deep commitment to making superb products and building a unique culture that reinforces innovation and risk-taking. This book tells a compelling story about how he did it. The lessons will be invaluable for anyone starting a business or building a career." --Bill Hambrecht, co-founder or Hambrecht & Quist and chairman of WRHambrecht + Co

Review Quotes

"Quench Your Own Thirst is a frosty mug full of sound advice for turning passion into a great business."
--Tony Hsieh, New York Times bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

"Always true to himself, the author's belief in Samuel Adams and the people around him is what makes his story and philosophy so genuine and endearing. Koch's down-to-earth personality, business advice, and passion are good models for those interested in making their own ways. "
--Kirkus Reviews

"Quench Your Own Thirst introduces an engaging, down-to-earth, fifth-generation brew master who also happens to be a savvy, creative, disciplined business mastermind. Jim Koch's story of how he built his beer company - and, incidentally, helped start a new industry in craft beer - serves candid, inspiring insights useful for entrepreneurs in any field. Koch's practical optimism sets the standard for how business success and personal happiness can be beautifully connected."
--Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and best-selling author of Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End and MOVE: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead

"Jim Koch has opened a lot of doors for craft breweries like mine who have succeeded based on the premise of challenging the status quo. Every entrepreneur and aspiring entrepreneur will find useful and sage advice between the covers of Quench Your Own Thirst -- and Jim's personality, wisdom and sense of humor come through in his writing as crystal clear as a pint of Sam Adams Lager."
--Sam Calagione, President & Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery

"Like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and the other greats, Jim Koch's entrepreneurial journey is motivated by a deep commitment to making superb products and building a unique culture that reinforces innovation and risk-taking. This book tells a compelling story about how he did it. The lessons will be invaluable for anyone starting a business or building a career."
--Bill Hambrecht, co-founder or Hambrecht & Quist and chairman of WR Hambrecht + Co

"This is an engaging and well-written blend of stories from a beloved company's founding and sound guidance on surmounting common dilemmas faced in business and in life."
--Publishers Weekly

"Anyone enjoying America's current Golden Age of Beer will be fascinated by Jim Koch's story of how it came to be. But this is really a book about the individual and team traits necessary to build any enterprise -- and about the paradoxical combination of hard-headed practicality, impractical dreaming, long-term vision, and minute-by-minute adaptability required for success. Jim Koch once called Samuel Adams beer 'America's classic lager.' He has written a classic American story of pluck, ingenuity, setbacks, and achievement, all in a tone of gently self-mocking humor."
--James Fallows, National Correspondent at The Atlantic

"For me, Sam Adams was not only the best beer I've ever tasted but also the best investment I ever made."
--John Paulson, Founder of Paulson & Co.

"[Koch] writes about building and running a company in a fun and folksy tone. He is also refreshingly candid about the hard battles and missteps along the way. Unlike many turgid, self-told business books, Quench Your Own Thirst goes down easy."
--Reuters

About the Author

Jim Koch is the founder of The Boston Beer Company and brewer of Samuel Adams. He founded the company in 1984 using his great-great grandfather's recipe and set to the task of revolutionizing American beer. Samuel Adams Boston Lager has been an important catalyst in the American Craft Beer Revolution for more than thirty years, bringing full-flavored, award-winning beer to the American beer landscape. The Boston Beer Company has become one of the leading American craft breweries and now accounts for just over one percent of the U.S. beer market.