New Belgium CEO Shaun Belongie on Human Powered Business Model

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: Hello and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast where today's top executives share stories of their leadership journey, including the defining moments that tested their values, sharpened their judgment, and shaped how they build teams and lead with purpose. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group Executive Search. You can learn more about us at notogroup.com. As a trusted partner to mission and values-driven consumer brands, we've had the privilege of working alongside some of the world's most inspiring operators as they've tackled the challenge of building high performance leadership teams. In this podcast, we spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies.

Shaun Belongie is the CEO of New Belgium Brewing. Before becoming CEO, he served as New Belgium's VP of Marketing and then as their CMO. Shaun has over 20 years experience in brand building and commercial leadership at premier CPG companies like Kraft Foods and Nestlé Purina. With a background that spans marketing, sales, and finance, Shaun is a steward of New Belgium's people-centric culture and human-powered business model. He joins me on the podcast to discuss his transition from CMO to CEO, the important work of building a strong cultural foundation, maintaining authentic values throughout periods of growth, and much more. Sean, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. It's great to have you here.

[00:01:38] Shaun Belongie: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

[00:01:40] Roy Notowitz: Awesome, awesome. So take us back to the beginning. What was your very first spark of interest in the industry, and how did that evolve into the career that you've built?

[00:01:50] Shaun Belongie: Well, if I take it kind of all the way back, I didn't really know where I was going, exactly.

[00:01:56] Roy Notowitz: Same.

[00:01:57] Shaun Belongie: I was a, uh, failed rockstar with a English Literature degree as a backup plan, which is risky.

[00:02:05] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:02:05] Shaun Belongie: And so I certainly didn't know what brand management was, either, or that that was a career. So, you know, like you, I think in this idea of not knowing where exactly you're going, I'm an advocate for really just thinking about what you're good at, and trying to find out what that is, and letting that guide where your career is going to go. So, for me, I had taken, fortunately a, uh, intro to computer science class in my last year at college, and that got me in the door to what, at the time, was Andersen Consulting, which became Accenture. And I played a minor role in, uh, averting the Y2K crisis. Yes, I'm that old, but I came in as a actual technical developer, which was not the right spot for me.

[00:02:50] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:02:51] Shaun Belongie: But, in doing that, I, I eventually was able to move into change management, which really got me into this idea of thinking, you know, how people behave, why they do what they do, and the role that communications can play in that. You know, as a English major, and, I think, a writer, that really sparked my interest, you know? And, from there, as I went back to business school and kind of figured out, "Oh, there is this thing called brand management," that's really what got me there is just kind of something that I was good at that I didn't necessarily even think I was going to be in, that then eventually led me into brand management.

[00:03:22] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So there still is a case for a good liberal arts education out there, for anyone who has kids that are college age.

[00:03:30] Shaun Belongie: I'm a firm believer of liberal arts education. Yes. Proud byproduct.

[00:03:34] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So you stepped into the CEO role just over two years ago after serving as CMO. What's that transition been like for you, and can you tell us about New Belgium and how you got there as well?

[00:03:48] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, so I think I had a bit of an advantage to how these transitions normally go in the sense that I had been at New Belgium in the CMO capacity for four or five years before transitioning into the CEO role. So I had a lot of time to kind of understand the company, you know, I got to know people inside the company, what the company was really trying to do. And, in that process, in that time, we also were going through a lot of portfolio transformation work. So, you know, work that you often would be thinking about from a CEO perspective, you know, I was working kind of hand in hand with the CEO in that work. So, as I transitioned to CEO, it was a little bit less kind of, I think, jarring of a transition in the sense that I had the time to kind of get familiar with the company and kind of knew what we were trying to do at the company. So, in my background, before New Belgium was really working in big, consumer packaged goods companies. So I worked at Kraft Foods for three or four years, and then worked at Purina Pet Care, which is part of Nestlé for nine or 10 years. So I had a pretty solid background in marketing. I had also done some finance and strategy roles at those companies, but that really is what led me, you know, to think a bit more broadly than just marketing, and, ultimately, led me to the CEO role.

[00:05:02] Roy Notowitz: So what kind of experiences from CPG do you think you really gained or took away from the time at Purina and Nestlé?

[00:05:12] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, I think the really good traditional brand management companies, they really push you to think about your brand as your business, both from the perspective of having the breadth of thinking across, not just, "What ad campaign are we going to run?" but thinking about the whole picture of operations in there as well, but also just kind of having the accountability and ownership for the business. So I think that really leads you to kind of have an understanding and just a different perspective in terms of some other marketing training where it is, maybe, more in the creative or advertising field, to think about ownership of a business and think about kind of from the top to the bottom of the P&L, how are you going to run the business and impact the business?

[00:05:59] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, so kind of a commercial mindset.

[00:06:01] Shaun Belongie: Yeah. You're really thinking about a commercial mindset's a great way to put it.

[00:06:04] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, that's good. So what's been the most challenging aspect of stepping into the CEO role after being in the CMO position?

[00:06:14] Shaun Belongie: For me, stepping into the role, again, I had a lot of background in the company, and so, to some degree it should have been a relatively easy transition. And in some ways it was. I think the scale and the speed of some of the challenges that I then faced, both from some kind of generational category things that are happening in terms of people's preferences changing toward, you know, what type of alcohol they're interested in, but also just moderation of drinking in general.

[00:06:42] Roy Notowitz: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:42] Shaun Belongie: So those changes have happened really rapidly, which puts a lot of pressure on just what you're going to do as a company from a portfolio perspective.

[00:06:50] Roy Notowitz: You have to sharpen your pencil a bit.

[00:06:52] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, absolutely. And then unfortunately, we also were faced with a natural disaster. The Asheville Flood, Hurricane Helene shut down our brewery for four or five months.

[00:07:03] Roy Notowitz: Wow.

[00:07:03] Shaun Belongie: Uh, pretty catastrophic event. Fortunately, we did not lose anyone in that event. That's obviously first and foremost, but our brewery was significantly damaged. And so that, probably, was the big "Welcome to the big leagues, rookie," where you really had to think about things that are way outside the scope of what you would typically think from a marketing perspective, but also just the cultural needs of the company and really trying to draw people together to help one another out. Fortunately, at New Belgium, that's really just built into our DNA, but certainly was a big test of someone who was pretty new to really thinking about leading an entire company, versus just leading a business. It was unclear whether people at our company could even get supplies, so I flew to Charlotte, along with a couple of people from operations to drive supplies up, rent a minivan, go load it up at Target with diapers, and dog food, and cat food, and all kinds of supplies that maybe people couldn't get, to drive it to Asheville to--

[00:08:07] Roy Notowitz: Wow.

[00:08:07] Shaun Belongie: --put it in our distribution center and basically get people supplies. And I think, you know, that, in retrospect, as people have talked to me about it, it was just a big moment for people to say, "Okay, this is really bad, but we've got support. The company's going to be here to help us, and the CEO," -- me -- "is plugged in and is going to do what it takes to get this thing fixed."

[00:08:31] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. Wow. So how did you offset the lack of production in that facility?

[00:08:36] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, so it was about 40% of our total capacity, which is a lot. In a interesting aside, we had just hired a new Chief Supply Chain Officer a week prior to this happening.

[00:08:48] Roy Notowitz: Wow. Welcome to the company.

[00:08:50] Shaun Belongie: Welcome to the company. I remember calling him the night of when we kind of had realized the scale of what was happening and just said, "Please don't quit. Please do not quit." Fortunately, he had a very long career at Anheuser-Busch before joining us, and so really, it became we could not fill the capacity within our own existing network.

[00:09:10] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:09:10] Shaun Belongie: It really became a need to find external production to do that, and he was able to really kind of use his network--

[00:09:18] Roy Notowitz: Wow.

[00:09:18] Shaun Belongie: --Rally his team, to figure that out. In probably four to six weeks we were producing already, which is just kind of unheard of, given how challenging it is to find a facility that could have--

[00:09:31] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:09:31] Shaun Belongie: --the right type of capabilities to do what you needed them to do.

[00:09:34] Roy Notowitz: So is the Asheville facility back up--

[00:09:36] Shaun Belongie: Yep.

[00:09:37] Roy Notowitz: --online?

[00:09:37] Shaun Belongie: Yep. Back up and running. And this is again, great learning from just crisis management. You know, sometimes, in that kind of situation, it's better to act than to overanalyze.

[00:09:49] Roy Notowitz: Right. So, okay, so you've had a few challenges stepping into that role. Before we get more into that, tell me about your time serving as a CMO and what that was like for you.

[00:10:01] Shaun Belongie: So, you know, the mandate coming in was that Fat Tire, which is one of the kind of flagship, iconic craft beer brands in the US, which had really been one of the kind of drivers of craft beer in the first place, had kind of reached a place where it just wasn't as special because there just had been such an explosion of new craft breweries. And so, you know, probably not an atypical place for companies to find themselves that are probably a little bit older, is that the thing that got you there isn't the thing that can take you forward. And so, it really was trying to figure out: what is that next brand? What is that next idea that can push us forward? Again, while you have this fading brand that you're also trying to figure out, can you make it more relevant to a contemporary audience? So it was kind of that twofold goal really, of thinking through: how do you try to, you know, improve Fat Tire, which was fading, and find something new, which ended up being Voodoo Ranger, as an IPA brand that could really take its place and trying to build that brand? But I think, you know, more broadly, beyond the kind of brand or portfolio challenge, it really was a challenge of -- and this is the interesting thing I think about craft beer in general, but specifically New Belgium -- is that it had just reached a point of maturity where we had operated very entrepreneurially, very, kind of, on a one-off, like, "Hey, let's do this and that," and there was very little process, which, in some ways, was awesome. I mean, it was, I think, what people liked. But, as you got bigger, you really needed to put some of that structure in place. And so, part of my role, also, was really to build out a structure for what a marketing team would look like. You know, where would your design and creative people come from? We actually didn't have brand managers, so the idea that there would be a person who would work on Voodoo Ranger, and there would be a person who would work on Fat Tire, that, that didn't exist as an idea.

[00:12:03] Roy Notowitz: That's really interesting. Let's talk a little bit about the CEO role some more. And I know there's a very strong culture there, and one of the jobs of the CEO and the leadership team, of course, is around shaping culture. I'm curious what your take is on that, and what you've learned about shaping culture from the CEO seed, as well as just in general being at New Belgium.

[00:12:27] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, that has been one of the really fun parts of this job. The big thing that kind of struck me from that cultural foundation that our founders really laid down for the company was this idea of the importance of rituals to driving belonging and kind of a shared understanding of what the company was. But they're meant to be moments in time for people as they progress at the company to remind them that we are a collective group, which is a really important driver of culture. But also to kind of remind them of, like, what this is all about in the first place. So, at our one year anniversary-- so you make it to one year, you get an anniversary bike. The New Belgium story is really founded on a bike ride through Belgium, so you get that anniversary bike -- it changes every year, and then, at five years, we take you to Belgium.

[00:13:18] Roy Notowitz: Oh wow.

[00:13:19] Shaun Belongie: So we basically recreate our founder's bike trip through Belgium. Including the bar in Bruges called 't Brugs Beerje--

[00:13:28] Roy Notowitz: Wow.

[00:13:28] Shaun Belongie: --Where he dreamed up the idea of Fat Tire while sitting at the bar and talking. Sometimes our founder still goes with us, which is a really special occurrence. But that's been the thing that's really blown me away is just the importance of those rituals and just the time to kind of reconnect with what we're trying to do as a company--

[00:13:48] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:13:48] Shaun Belongie: --And kind of the symbols and the iconography of that being a really important marker.

[00:13:53] Roy Notowitz: Wow. What a great story.

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So the human-powered business model--

[00:14:50] Shaun Belongie: Yes.

[00:14:50] Roy Notowitz: --at New Belgium is frequently referenced as a differentiator. Can you tell us more about that and any other stories or examples of how the mission comes to life?

[00:15:02] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, so the story kind of begins, right, in Belgium with Jeff and his kind of discovery of Belgian beers and saying, "There's not Belgian beers in the US, this could be a really good idea." Then, when he came back, Kim Jordan, his wife at the time, said, "What are the things we want to do as a business?" before they ever became a business. They were principles really driven by this idea of, "We want to use beer as a vehicle to do something bigger." It started with, "We're going to make world class beer. We're going to win medals." But then, they wanted to build this culture of enjoyment, this idea that beer should be something to be savored and enjoyed, not slammed. Making an environmental impact in the world and having fun. This idea that you're at work a lot of your life, it shouldn't be horrible. And doing right by people really became the fourth principle, and the power of it really is that it's all interconnected.

[00:15:58] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:15:59] Shaun Belongie: It's a really powerful model.

[00:16:01] Roy Notowitz: So, a lot of times, when companies are under the pressure to perform, sometimes the values get diluted or, you know, there becomes more of an emphasis on other things, based on time and resources. So how do you keep that authenticity and that focus as you've grown?

[00:16:21] Shaun Belongie: So, one of the great stories of the values being put into play was back in the late '90s, early 2000s, there was this opportunity to become the first brewery to be powered by wind, but it was a joint venture opportunity between utilities, and New Belgium would have to put in quite a bit of money to make this work. It was going to cost us something. And, from the very beginning, the founders had this profit-sharing program, so the employees, what we would call coworkers, shared in the profits of the company. And so they went to them at the end of the year and said, "Hey, this year we're going to have whatever, 8% profit sharing. So 8% of your salary, you'll get that as a profit share, or we can invest in this wind power," which would be the first opportunity for a brewery to be wind powered. And the coworkers unanimously voted to give up their money to invest in the wind power. So, the mirror of that, or the parallel of that, is we've made a commitment to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 55% by 2030, so we continue to make what you could describe as non-economic decisions--

[00:17:27] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:17:27] Shaun Belongie: --To invest in our breweries in a way that we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We're not necessarily asking our coworkers to fund that, but we're essentially asking our parent company to give us that opportunity because they don't necessarily have an immediate payoff where you'd say, "Oh, we're going to invest this equipment, it's going to save us money." It's like, "No, it's going to save us greenhouse gas." And so that kind of principle and that history has enabled us to continue to innovate in that environmental impact space in a way that continues on. The other thing that was instituted early on was a dollar per barrel philanthropy budget. The idea being that the bigger we get, the more we give. And since the founding, we have donated close to $40 million from that plan, and we have become part of the Kirin Group. There's absolute support for the continuation of that, that's just foundational to what we do as a company. There's such history there that there's not even a discussion of, like, "Well, is that something we could cut?" It's like, that's off the table. That stuff doesn't even--

[00:18:30] Roy Notowitz: They just know that it's part of the brand and--

[00:18:33] Shaun Belongie: Correct.

[00:18:34] Roy Notowitz: That's awesome. So Shaun, you've shared the health challenges that your son has bravely faced, and I'm curious how that experience inspired you to think differently about life and leadership.

[00:18:49] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, so he was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer at age 15. And he's trying to start high school, and make friends, and all that--

[00:19:01] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:19:01] Shaun Belongie: --And then is kind of pulled out of school to deal with this health crisis. And, you know, of course, I'm devastated by this, my wife's devastated by this, and we're just kind of so down. And he has to have a surgery. It's a 14 hour surgery to take basically his thyroid, but all of the lymph nodes out of his neck as well. And, you know, two days after that surgery, which the doctors were amazed by this, he's like, "Cool, I'm ready to go home now," and he has a smile on his face.

[00:19:35] Roy Notowitz: Wow.

[00:19:36] Shaun Belongie: And so, to me, the thing that just was inescapable is a lesson is just, man, attitude is so important. It's a cliche, but we often have very little control of what's happening, whether it's in our lives or whether it's in business, there's always stuff happening around you that is outside of your control. And his ability to focus on, like, what he wanted to do and, you know, how he was going to get better, and have that positive attitude, it was just remarkable to see. And it was such a lesson for me. And, I mean, the thing that he went on to do, which probably more is a life lesson, is he really got into rock climbing at that point. Which is, like, okay, he's still recovering, he’s still got all these health issues, and now he's going to go do rock climbing. Just kind of gives you a lesson of just going for it, you know, and not letting your fears or your concerns, health, whatever, just get in the way of you living life or, you know, again, more broadly, you could think about it in business sense of just not letting fear hold you back.

[00:20:36] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. I mean, it gives you perspective on what matters too.

[00:20:41] Shaun Belongie: Absolutely.

[00:20:41] Roy Notowitz: And empathy and compassion for people who are all around us that are dealing with these types of things.

[00:20:48] Shaun Belongie: Everyone's got a story. That ability to understand that, yeah, a lot of people are dealing with a lot of really hard stuff. That affects how they show up and just having empathy for that.

[00:20:58] Roy Notowitz: That's amazing. And your son's doing quite well now?

[00:21:00] Shaun Belongie: He's doing great. Yeah. Thank you for asking that. Yeah, he's just finished his first semester at University of Colorado in Boulder, so he'll be coming home tomorrow, and yeah, he's fantastic.

[00:21:09] Roy Notowitz: Oh, that's great. That's such great news. So when you reflect on your previous CPG experience at Kraft and Nestlé Purina, and now leading a craft beer brand that's rooted in values and purpose, what leadership lessons carried over? And what had to change or be unlearned coming into a different type of company?

[00:21:34] Shaun Belongie: I think a lot of the lessons that I learned at big companies really carried over. You know, big companies act with values as well. When I think about Purina and the foundation that they really had from their founder, that was a really powerful driver for that company as well. The challenge that I've seen is that when you're at a bigger company, there's so many more stakeholders, so it's just much slower moving. You can't kind of more quickly say, "Hey, I think this is really what we need to do," and just move the company there. There's just too many people, they're just too spread out, and, in some ways, that's one of the things that you learn from a culture perspective is, like, it's hard--

[00:22:13] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:22:13] Shaun Belongie: --To really drive that, and the bigger the company gets, the harder it is to do that. What I've seen is that it's a little bit more easy to move on things more quickly because there's less stakeholders.

[00:22:24] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:22:24] Shaun Belongie: I will say also, as a person coming from a big company to a small company, there's good and bad in that, in the sense that, I remember one of my first meetings with the CEO, I came in and said, "Okay, you know, here's what I'm thinking." And so he said, "What's your recommendation?" And I said, "Well, I think we should do this," and he is like, "Okay." And I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I mean, who else has to sign off on that?" He's like, "No one. Like, we're good." And I was like, "Oh crap. Okay. I probably would've done a little more thinking about that," because I was so used to going, "Okay, well once we sell it to the VP, then we're going to have to go-- they're going to take it to the CMO. And the CMO, they might have to even take it to the CEO. And if it's big enough, I might have to go to the, you know, parent company." And so that is certainly a big difference between big and small.

[00:23:07] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So, you know, we talked a little bit about the beer industry and consumer business more broadly, you know, and how it's facing pressure from sustainability, climate impact, changing consumer taste, digital disruption. Are you purposely looking for different types of skill sets or backgrounds or experiences in the hires that you're making now versus maybe five years ago.

[00:23:30] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, we are. I think one of the really incredible kind of legacy things, again, that New Belgium had was there was really this push to hire people from within the company. And, you know, when it started, it really was you had to work in our tasting room. Everybody, you know, would have to come up through the tasting room. And that still exists today. We do a lot of internal hiring, which is awesome. But, as we became a bigger company, as we scaled up, what's become more challenging is that you can't have, you know, somebody be your controller who has no accounting experience, you know, at all.

[00:24:05] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:24:05] Shaun Belongie: The smartest person in the world who has, you know, all the ambition, but doesn't have any of the training, it's just, the bigger the company you get, the harder that becomes to do. So.

[00:24:14] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:24:15] Shaun Belongie: As we have grown, we've started looking and, you know, certainly I'm a part of that, I think, hiring philosophy of we do need some people in leadership roles who are bringing some more big company experience, just from kind of a process and structure place to kind of help us as we think about trying to build our business and trying to scale from where we are today to a much bigger company. There's certainly things we want to pull from the bigger companies that have kind of already gone through this process, this evolution, to kind of pull those lessons into our company. And, all the while, obviously, not losing the kind of cultural foundation that has been such a driver for the company.

[00:25:01] Roy Notowitz: So what leadership qualities and competencies do you typically look for in your senior executive team?

[00:25:09] Shaun Belongie: It really is continue to look for people who have humility. I think at a purpose-driven company, it's not about you. If you're going to make it about you, you're in the wrong type of company. It's got to be about this collective good. Transparency is another one, right? You got to be able to admit when you're wrong. Take accountability. I mean, again, that's one of our values. And so, I think about those two a lot. I think the other one, for us, is learning agility.

[00:25:31] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:25:32] Shaun Belongie: Kind of that ability to be curious and innovative in this type of environment where there's so much change happening--

[00:25:39] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:25:40] Shaun Belongie: --in so many different areas, as you outlined. That's such a critical skill, and, again, that's why it's one of our values is this idea of curiosity.

[00:25:47] Roy Notowitz: I love that. As an area of leadership growth, how are you thinking about technology as part of your strategic plan?

[00:25:55] Shaun Belongie: So there's a couple things there. You know, we're not that old of a company, but we're old enough that we have legacy technical debt--

[00:26:04] Roy Notowitz: Uh huh.

[00:26:04] Shaun Belongie: --stuff where it's like, "Well, we had this system, and then there's this system," and there's just enough noise that it creates challenges for us. So, one of the pitfalls that I try to avoid is this idea of, like, "What's our AI strategy?" You know, "What's our cloud strategy?" You know, I think that is probably the wrong way to think about it because it'd just be chasing different trends--

[00:26:24] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:26:25] Shaun Belongie: --as they come up. The way we're trying to think about it is thinking about how can digital power something that we're trying to do within our business strategy? Like, what technology is that going to be? It's, like, we don't know necessarily, but we're looking--

[00:26:38] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:26:38] Shaun Belongie: --For those opportunities where technology can play a role. And then the other thing, I think, which again sounds really simple, but, again, I've just seen it play out, even going back to my early, early days at Accenture, is making sure that you're not trying to boil the ocean. When you think of, like, all the stuff you could fix, it can become so huge that it's overwhelming and nothing happens. So one of the things that we've done, again, which sounds pretty simple, is just making sure that, if you're tying the digital strategy into the business strategy, there should be an IT person who is responsible--

[00:27:11] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:27:11] Shaun Belongie: --for whatever that thing is. But there should be someone in the business who's also responsible for that. And so making sure that they have a clear, kind of joint accountability for that thing getting done has been really powerful for us to really start making progress in some of these areas.

[00:27:25] Roy Notowitz: Well, and also, there's so much of a human element. It's a human-powered company, so I'm sure balancing that and making sure that you're staying true to the brand, and the ethos, and the emotional connection that people have. It's an experience. It's not something that you can necessarily do a hundred percent digitally, right? So there's this interaction you must have with consumers, right, that's human.

[00:27:48] Shaun Belongie: Yes. And I think when we think about kind of our external or consumer interactions, it really is thinking about: what value can we bring? Like, how can we entertain people? What can we do that's going to be an outgrowth of what we're trying to do from our tasting rooms?

[00:28:03] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:28:04] Shaun Belongie: How can we make their experience, you know, simpler? How can we make the purchase, you know, more frictionless?

[00:28:10] Roy Notowitz: Right. So you've written about mentorship and career advice for your kids, and you've shared some of that with me and others. What guidance would you give to someone who's early in their career as they think about their direction?

[00:28:25] Shaun Belongie: I think it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier in that idea of not getting too worried about not having it all figured out at the beginning. But I think the other thing for me is this idea, which I think kind of goes hand in hand, is the idea of slowing down to speed up. If somebody is, is successful, they're going to be ambitious, and they're going to want to say, "Hey, how do I get to that next place? How do I get to the next spot in my career?" You know, especially if it's in a field like brand marketing where there are, you know, kind of clear levels across companies then you'll start comparing yourself to: am I a brand manager? Am I a director? Am I a senior director? There's nothing wrong with that, but I think the best experiences, sometimes, are not necessarily the ones that got you a promotion.

[00:29:08] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:29:09] Shaun Belongie: They're the ones that felt, maybe, "I don't know if this is going to be the right role for me," or maybe even felt like a step backwards.

[00:29:16] Roy Notowitz: That's fantastic. That's great advice.

[00:29:18] Shaun Belongie: Something that stuck with me from my early days is this idea of finding a pure group of friends to support you.

[00:29:25] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:29:25] Shaun Belongie: Investing in those relationships and those friendships, because those are the people who can really be the people you lean on.

[00:29:33] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:29:33] Shaun Belongie: Give you, you know, input to the stuff that you're working on. You know, you don't want to bring everything to your boss and say, "Hey, what do you think?" Being able to go to them and say, "What are you working on? What does it look like?" has been such a powerful driver--

[00:29:45] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:29:45] Shaun Belongie: --for my career.

[00:29:46] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. I would say that starts in college too, right?

[00:29:49] Shaun Belongie: Absolutely. Yep.

[00:29:50] Roy Notowitz: As well as in the workplace, once you start, you know, moving up in your career. But some of those relationships that you build, you never know where they're going to lead and how they might be able to help you in the future. So it's always good to have those relationships and to be of service to other people too that are in your network.

[00:30:07] Shaun Belongie: Absolutely.

[00:30:08] Roy Notowitz: So, as you think about the future, what are you most excited about?

[00:30:13] Shaun Belongie: So the thing that gets me excited about the future of New Belgium is still that idea of innovation. It was never a strict way of like, "We will only do this, and that's the only thing that this company can make." It was always about this broader idea of: where could we take this? And yes, it started with the idea of, like, "Let's bring Belgian beers to the US," but, even when our founders were still here, they were stretching much, much beyond that. So that's what really gets me excited, along with just continuing to build on their legacy. Again, we were one of the first, uh, I think maybe the first, certified B Corp brewery.

[00:30:52] Roy Notowitz: Yeah,

[00:30:53] Shaun Belongie: We are right in the midst of re-certifying again, but being part of that community and also just continuing to try to really push on the edges of what a successful business can look like that isn't just trying to drive a bottom line, but is thinking more broadly about, uh, a group of stakeholders beyond just the business results.

[00:31:16] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, that's great. That's great. And how are you thinking about your career currently and the future of what's next for you as well?

[00:31:24] Shaun Belongie: Well, I've got a lot to do here. I, I still think. We are just really transitioning to reporting more directly into Kirin Holdings, which I think is going to be great for us to really streamline some of that work. But I really want to make sure that the company is in a good place. And, again, as you mentioned earlier, we're faced with a bunch of stuff happening, and so, you know, similarly, just from kind of the business perspective, really want to make sure that, you know, before I'm thinking about leaving the company, that I'm getting us in a really solid place to take that next leap, if you will. So I'm going to be here for a while if they'll have me. I have been really energized by a kind of smaller company that really is thinking about: you know, what is its purpose in the world and what is it trying to do beyond its product? So, in the future, that probably--

[00:32:17] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:32:17] Shaun Belongie: --will be where I end up--

[00:32:19] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:32:19] Shaun Belongie: --again, is a company like that.

[00:32:21] Roy Notowitz: We're a B Corp as well, we were one of the first search firms. And it's such a great community.

[00:32:27] Shaun Belongie: Yeah.

[00:32:27] Roy Notowitz: And the collective impact is significant.

[00:32:29] Shaun Belongie: Absolutely.

[00:32:30] Roy Notowitz: That's great. Shaun, thanks so much for being on the podcast. It's been great to have you here. I've really enjoyed getting to know you over the years, and I appreciate you coming in and having this conversation with us.

[00:32:44] Shaun Belongie: Yeah, really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.

[00:32:48] Roy Notowitz: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit howihire.com for details about the show. How I Hire is created by Noto Group Executive Search. To find out more about us visit notogroup.com. You can also sign up for our monthly email job alert newsletter there and find additional job search strategy resources, as well as more content on hiring. This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit aomcclain.com.

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