My biggest mistake: Andy Miller, co-founder of Heaps Normal

When Andy Miller, Ben Holdstock, Peter Brennan and Jordy Smith were in the early stages of founding their non-alcoholic beer business Heaps Normal, they received an email which, had it broken differently, could have derailed the entire business plan. 

Recalling that email a few years on with SmartCompany Plus, Miller laughs.

“It’s all a bit embarrassing really,” he says.

Here’s what he looks at as the non-alcoholic craft beer brand’s biggest mistake.

The mistake

Like many early-stage businesses, the founders were labouring over every detail of their branding: logos, cans, cartons, Miller says. Shortly after he and his co-founders settled on a design, they became aware of a problem; the the kind that you don’t notice until you do.

“We included this little smiley that made a bullet point almost look like a wink. So it was a bit more fun and playful,” Miller said.

After Heaps Normal’s first run of cans had been made and distributed, an email arrived. It was from Stirling Howland, co-founder and brand director at Balter Brewing Company.

The team were thrilled at first.

“We saw his name pop up and thought ‘oh amazing’. The email started by saying he was really stoked for us and obviously we have a lot of respect for the brand he built with Balter,” Miller said.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the reason Howland was reaching out.

That smiley face design flourish on Heaps Normal’s cans resembled a smile that also present in Balter’s branding.

Source: Supplied.

The context

Founded in 2018, Heaps Normal’s goal is to normalise non-alcoholic beer by ‘brewing a beverage that tastes so good you won’t miss the alcohol’. 

When Howland’s email arrived the Heaps Normal team included just its co-founders.

It hadn’t raised any capital and this was well before the stage a business might have in-house counsel or lawyer on retainer.

They’d sought advice from friends and advisors on their branding and designs, but nobody had noticed the issue.

“During the design process we went through a really long list of names and probably about six or seven totally different designs until we landed on a couple that were utilising the name we decided on,” he recalled.

“We shopped those two designs around to our close friends, advisors and people in our network and explained this is the sort of vibe we are trying to get across with the brand, which one of these do you get that from? We got some really great feedback from friends and family.”

The impact

Having already printed more than 50,000 cans which included that smiley face — the minimum run for cans is quite large, Miller says — the mistake could have proven to be quite costly. 

“It was one of those things where we were like ‘oh shit we did not really clock that’, but we could see why they would be annoyed,” Miller said.

The worst-case scenario would have been being asked to recall the first batch of cans they had released. But thankfully Balter Brewing Company were not unreasonable Miller says.

The fix

“Once we realised they felt strongly about it we wanted to do the right thing so we said we would fix it immediately on the next packaging run.”

He believes the Heaps Normal team’s willingness to empathise with Balter’s position, and see the situation from both sides, led to a quick resolution that was acceptable for everyone. Importantly, Miller also believes it was the reason lawyers didn’t need to get involved.

“We told Balter we won’t produce any more beer with that design. We’ll fix the design and we will run out the existing packaging in the market and we are sorry for the mistake,” Miller said.

“In the end that approach made sure it did not become a bigger thing.”

The lesson

The outcome has firmed the Heaps Normal founding team’s belief that good things come when you’re reasonable and empathise with others.

“What we have learnt is that it does not matter if you are right, or if we intended to breach that trademark, or if it was too close or not too close,” Miller said.

“It was for us, about empathising with their position and doing the right thing.

“Contracts and legal obligations are there as a bit of a safety net and more often than not you can avoid the high cost and time and energy of relying on the legal process in any situation by trying to put yourself in the shoes of whoever else you are negotiating with.”

Confronting such a stressful situation with his co-founders, with considerable support from their partners too, made Miller realise how lonely entrepreneurship would be as a solo founder.

“On several occasions in the last couple of years we’ve shot each other a message to acknowledge how great it is to have that relationship,” Miller said.

“I just couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a solo founder and be going through some of these really stressful growing pains as you’re starting a business.

“We’ve all had moments where we’ve been the ones who needed to be pulled back on track or be told by somebody in our corner that we need to think a bit differently or take a breath.

“Sometimes it’s hard to know when to take that breath and take a step back.

“Having business partners and co-founders has been a real lifeline.”