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It Takes Patience to Pour: Why Slow Brands Win Big
Impatience is loud. Patience is quiet. And yet, over and over again in this business, it’s the quiet brands, the ones that build slowly, intentionally, and a little unsexy, that end up “overnight successes” ten years in the making.
This newsletter is for the founders, operators, and dreamers who are tired of feeling “behind” and are finally ready to admit: it just takes time to build something real.
The Myth of the 90-Day Miracle
If you scroll this industry long enough, you’d think every brand went from zero to national in 90 days, fueled by vibes, viral content, and a sexy can.
Here’s the reality no one puts on a pitch deck:
Most beverage brands fail not because the product is bad, but because the planning, patience, and execution are.
The distribution system is built for persistence, not for your launch party energy. It rewards the brand that keeps showing up long after the confetti is swept up.
You can’t spreadsheet your way to product market fit. You earn it in aisles, in bars, in the quiet, awkward conversations where a buyer tells you, “People like it, but they’re not rebuying yet, here’s why.”
Patience Is Not Passive
Patience gets a bad rep. People hear “be patient” and translate it as “sit still and hope.” That’s not patience; that’s wishful thinking in nicer shoes.
Real patience in this business looks like:
Active listening
Standing in accounts until your legs hurt, watching how consumers shop your section, and asking cashiers what people actually say at checkout.
Calling your distributor, not to yell, but to ask: “Where are we seeing traction? Where are we forcing it?”
Boring consistency
Running the same fundamentals week after week: ABP reviews, priority account visits, pricing checks, in-store support.
Saying “no” to the 23rd “big idea” this month because the team hasn’t finished executing the first one.
Long‑term thinking in a short‑term world
Building a brand that still makes sense five years from now, not just something that looks clever on a TikTok tomorrow.
Accepting that distribution, awareness, and trust move on a different clock than your anxiety.
Where Impatience Trips Founders Up
Let’s have some fun and be honest: impatience has probably convinced you of at least one of these lies.
“If this isn’t big in six months, it’s dead.”
Reality: most brands people call “dead” are actually just in the awkward middle, too far in to be exciting, not far enough to feel safe.
Growth curves in beverage are closer to a slow ramp with sudden steps than a rocket ship.
“We just need one more channel / SKU / flavor.”
You don’t need seven more SKUs; you need three that actually move.
You don’t need every retailer; you need the right ones that match your price point, format, and story.
“We’re not growing because people don’t get it.”
Sometimes they don’t get it because you haven’t done the work to show up, educate, and support.
Other times, they get it perfectly well and they’re telling you it needs to taste better, be easier to find, or be priced for real humans, not your spreadsheet fantasy.
The levity here is simple: almost every founder is making the same mistakes at different addresses. You’re not uniquely failing; you’re just bumping into the same walls everyone bumps into. The difference is whether you slow down enough to learn the layout.
The Tortoise Still Wins (Especially in Beverage)
In one of the writeups on segment performance, year-over-year data showed NA beer and certain emerging categories quietly leading growth, but only where brands patiently built the right mix of product, placement, and education.
The tortoise wins here because:
Retailers back who shows up
Retailers and bartenders don’t fall in love with logos; they back the humans who come in, support the program, and make their lives easier.
When things go sideways (and they will), the patient, consistent brand gets more grace and better second chances.
Compounding only happens over time
Communities don’t form after one tasting; they form after you’ve been the “oh yeah, those guys are always here” brand for a while.
Distributors start to prioritize you when you’ve proven, month after month, that your brand will help them hit their numbers, not just show up for launch photos.
You stop chasing every trend
When you adopt a patient mindset, trends become tools, not survival plans.
You can leverage NA growth, RTD trends, or THC curiosity as extensions of your mission instead of panicked pivots.
Work, Rest, and the Patience to Stay in the Game
Here’s the paradox: the industry celebrates 24/7 hustle, but the clarity you need to build patiently only shows up when you give your brain some breathing room.
A few truths that are uncomfortable but necessary:
Your income is tied to your work. Your clarity is tied to your rest.
If you never unplug, you start confusing “busy” with “effective” and “tired” with “committed.”
Rest is not the enemy of growth; it’s the environment where your best strategic thinking finally has space to surface.
That might look like:
Taking a half day to step away from the laptop and walk your top two stores, just to observe.
Blocking one afternoon a week to review your ABP, not react to your inbox.
Actually enjoying a dinner without turning it into an informal focus group at least once in a while.
Yes, the grind is real. But if you burn out before the compounding years show up, all that early pain never gets to turn into payoff. Patience is how you keep yourself in the game long enough to see what you’re capable of.
Showing Up Is a Long Game, Not a Weekend Project
Founders who win, show up, not once, but repeatedly, boringly, predictably.
Practically, that means:
Feet in the accounts
Velocity doesn’t live in a spreadsheet. It lives in your feet, your calendar, and your car’s odometer.
The more time you spend in key neighborhoods, talking to staff, understanding local patterns, the more your marketing and promo dollars actually hit something.
Building humans, not just “channels”
This is still a relationship business. Distributors, buyers, and bartenders will forgive your imperfect deck long before they forgive your inconsistency.
“Bring back the humans” isn’t just a cute line; it’s a strategy.
Staying when it’s not fun
It’s easy to be “all in” at launch. It’s harder to be all in when it’s month 17, a chain reset bumped you down a shelf, and you’re explaining to investors why that’s not the end of the story.
The brands that last treat those moments as data points, not verdicts.
How to Practice Patient Building (Without Feeling Like You’re Standing Still)
Patience doesn’t mean moving slowly; it means moving deliberately. Here’s a framework you can actually use:
Pick your time horizon
Decide: Are you building for a 3-year flip or a 10-year asset? Neither is morally better, but your behavior should match your choice.
If you’re building a long-term asset, pace your spend, your promises, and your own energy to match.
Lock in an Annual Business Plan and live in it
An ABP is your anti-chaos tool: targets, key accounts, focus SKUs, promo calendar, and resourcing.
Without it, every month is a fresh reboot and every “idea” feels urgent.
Narrow your focus
Choose a few core markets and win them so decisively that you can actually tell the story of before vs. after.
Aim for depth, not scattered width. Retailers notice when you make their neighborhood your priority.
Build a patience stack
Weekly: Account walks, team check‑ins, ABP review.
Monthly: Distributor touchpoints, velocity analysis, promo recap.
Quarterly: Reset strategy, new product considerations, honest “stop doing” list.
Guard your energy like an asset
Schedule rest with the same seriousness as buyer meetings.
Use that rest to think, not just scroll. The best direction changes usually don’t show up in Slack threads.
Levity Break: Signs You Might Be Impatient (In Case You’re “Asking for a Friend”)
You change your brand tagline more often than your oil.
Your idea of “testing” a market is two weeks and one endcap.
You’ve said “This category is broken” more times than you’ve sat down with a category manager.
Your ABP is actually just vibes and a Google Sheet named “Final_FINAL_v7.”
If you see yourself in any of these, welcome to the club. The goal isn’t to eliminate impatience; it’s to put it on a leash and point it at the right problems.
Resources to Help You Build with Patience
If this resonates and you want to turn “I know I should be more patient” into something practical, here are a few places to dig in:
· BevAssets Consumer & Market Trends Newsletter - Real talk on what’s happening in bev, with a focus on strategy, timing, and sustainable growth https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bevassets-consumer-trends-newsletter/
· Substack Building Brands in the Beverage Industry – A conversation about what it really takes to grow in this market, beyond the highlight reel https://substack.com/home/post/p-166491882
On patience, performance, and leadership
· Catalyst Leadership Dynamics The Power of Patience in the Workplace – How patience actually improves clarity and decision quality at work https://success.catalystleadershipdynamics.com/tips/the-power-of-patience-in-the-workplace
· Sage Journals On (Im)Patience: A New Approach to an Old Virtue – A deeper dive into impatience as an emotion and what healthy patience really looks like https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10888683241263874
On showing up and building community
· YouTube Samuel Anderson: Building a Community Matters – Why putting people first, picking up the phone, and showing up in person still beats clever decks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4qUNOXWB7g
· Firebelly Marketing Podcast Samuel Anderson – Conversation on community, presence, and real-world brand building https://firebellymarketing.com/podcast/samuel-anderson/
· LinkedIn Founders who win, show up – A distilled reminder that velocity is earned in accounts, not in Excel https://www.linkedin.com/posts/samuel-anderson-74a582_beveragebusiness-founderslife-sellthrough-activity-7403780458918191104
On the long game of trends and categories
· Substack Why the Tortoise Wins – A look at year over year segment performance and why slow, disciplined brands are best positioned to capture NA and emerging category growth https://substack.com/home/post/p-174787122
· Gethoptimized The Evolution of Craft Beverage Distribution – How craft brands can navigate complex distribution without losing their minds or their margins https://www.gethoptimized.com/brewery-marketing-ideas/the-evolution-of-craft-beverage-distribution-with-sam-anderson-of-bevassets
If there’s one message to walk away with, it’s this: it takes patience to build. Not the sit-on-your-hands kind, but the keep showing up, keep listening, keep executing kind. Point your impatience at better questions and better habits, and let patience do its quiet work in the background.
