The Entrepreneurial Instinct: How Everyone Has the Innate Ability to Start a Successful Small Business

CHAPTER 4

The Chemical that Drives Risk Taking

“Rebelliousness can be healthy if well directed,” says Sam Calagione. Unlike your typical therapist, Calagione knows this fact firsthand. Calagione is the founder of the $56 million Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. He puts coffee, raisins, and chocolate in beer, he says, knowing full well that, “99 percent of the drinking public and commercial brewing world doesn’t even acknowledge what we’re making as beer.” His original concoctions include 120 Minute IPA, the strongest Indian pale ale ever brewed, and Belgian Pale Ale, featuring a potpourri of ingredients sourced from every continent, even Antarctica.

Calagione has been pushing against the status quo since he was a kid. He was the boy that would find ...