Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jacob Keyes. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jacob, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

When I was a kid my dad taught me to home brew. As I got older I got a job bartending and later managing at a brewery in Norman, OK called Coaches. My dad used to come in after work and we’d drink a beer and talk about how cool it would be to open a brewery one day.

Fast forward many years….I ended up running casinos for my tribe in Oklahoma. While my career in gaming was progressing, my dad became sick. The next thing I knew, he was in a nursing home. One day, while cleaning out his house, I found a book on brewing and inside that book was a folded up piece of paper with a recipe for an oatmeal stout. I thought I’d brew it up and take some to him, since he was getting to the point of being close to passing.

I made the beer, took it to him in the nursing home and eventually got kicked out for bringing beer in, but he got to taste it and loved it! Later that week I went to our local homebrew club meeting and let everyone try the beer. Everyone at the meeting loved it! One person told me I should send it to this big homebrew competition in Dallas…..so, I did.

The competition was part of a 3 day event that I attended, but I had to leave before the last day, which was the day of the awards ceremony, to go to Phoenix for a tribal gaming conference for my job in the casino. When I landed in the airport in Phoenix, I had some missed calls and a voicemail from my friends at the competition telling me I had won a medal for that beer. I was so excited to get back home after the conference so I could get my medal and take it to my dad, since it was actually his beer that won!

I got a cab to my hotel and as soon as I got to the room my brother called to tell me that dad had just passed away. He never got to see his medal.

Later that night I met up with our tribal leadership and CEO for dinner. While I was trying to book a flight back to OKC, I was told that I was being promoted and would be opening a new casino for our tribe. Then, someone I was with mentioned how I used to always talk about starting a brewery with my dad.

I started to remember those days visiting my dad in the nursing home and how I would visit with the folks in the lobby sometimes and hear their stories about their lives. I always noticed how so many of them, while sitting there waiting to die, were just so overwhelmed with regret. Regret over all the things they never did. Or the things they never attempted to do.

It was then that I realized how young my dad was when he went into the nursing home (56) and how short life can be. We’re never promised tomorrow. Today could be your last day. How would you live if you knew you only had one more day? I was already feeling regret over not starting a brewery with my dad. I thought I had forever, but I didn’t.

So, I forgot all about how I was going to be promoted at work and decided I would start our brewery. I knew that if I didn’t take action right away and make a good plan, it would never happen and I’d be sitting on my death bed one day regretting it.

I grabbed a napkin and wrote out a 5-year plan. 2 years of perfecting my craft by brewing almost every weekend in my garage. 2 years of learning the business side and entrepreneurship. 1 year of finding the money through investors or loans. I was 35 at the time. I had to set a deadline for myself so I would be sure to take action. I told myself I would open a brewery by the time I was 40. I turned 40 on October 25th of 2018. Three weeks later we brewed our first beer.

In short….I didn’t come up with the idea. My dad did. I never knew if it would work or if it was worthwhile or if there was even a problem I would be solving. I knew I had a passion for something and I had a purpose in life and I was more scared of regret than I was of failure. So, I went for it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

In my last answer I guess I really explained the first part of this question.

Skydance Brewing is Oklahoma’s Native American Craft Brewery. I’m a member of the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma. Being one of the very few Native owned breweries in the U.S. is what sets us apart in terms of branding and our story. In terms of our product, we brew many styles of beer, but we particularly focus on IPA’s. Our goal is to be the first brewery people in Oklahoma think of when they are looking for a great IPA.

I believe when a specific industry starts to get crowded, such as the craft beer industry, you’ve got to have a niche or be great at a particular piece of that industry in order to stand out. You need an identity. Just saying, “we brew a big variety of styles for everyone” doesn’t make you stand out. When you say that, you’re saying that you just make good beer. Nobody gets excited for good and with stiff competition, people need to get excited. Or else, you’re just one of many options for them.

By focusing on IPA’s we are able to stand out. IPA is the most popular style of beer in our industry. So when people are looking for the best IPA, they come to us. It also means that is the style we brew regularly, so our craft in that area is well polished and we get to try to perfect that category. If you’re the brewery that tries to brew “all the styles” you will rarely brew any of those styles enough to get really good at them. We’ve brewed so many IPA’s, we’ve become GREAT at it.

We also know that craft beer drinkers, especially IPA drinkers, are always looking for something new. they want to know what the new beer is that everyone is drinking. So, we release a new beer in a new package design in our taproom every Friday. So almost everytime a customer comes back to our brewery, the menu has new beers for them to try. We have customers tell us it’s like Christmas every time they come in.

The other thing that sets us apart is our branding. We’re one of the only Native owned breweries in the country. We like to say that not only are the owners Native, but the brewery itself is Native. Everything about the company is steeped in our culture and heritage. We use some of our beer names and branding to help educate the non-Native community about who we are. We are one of the few Native products you will find on the shelves at Walmart. This means a lot to our people. Representation is important to us. Representation in the right way is important. And the only way to make sure we are represented correctly and that our story is being told correctly, as Native people, is to tell our own story.

Entrepreneurship and branding is a great avenue for story telling. This is our way of telling our own story. It’s our way of changing how people view Native Americans. We are not a people of dispair or a people from the past. We’re not the trail of tears and we’re not what people see in movies where it’s a Native on a horse throwing a tomahawk. We’re business owners. We’re leaders. We’re successful. We are the biggest employers in many of the towns and cities in this state. Most importantly, we’re not gone or extinct or just history…..we’re still here. Those images from movies and old commercials….that’s not Native. This success in this modern world….this is native.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We started our brewery in a co-op brewing space in 2018. A year later we were hit with COVID. It almost killed our business before we ever got started. The state began letting us deliver beer. Instead of just waiting for orders to come in so we could deliver, I actually created an account on a social media platform called Next Door. It was basically a way for people in our neighborhood to connect about community events or neighborhood issues. I started making posts about how I own a brewery and here’s our menu. If you’d like me to deliver beer to your doorstep, I can do it.

The next thing I knew, my kids and I were delivering beer to our entire neighborhood and eventually other neighborhoods in the OKC metro. That led to us setting up a big pick-up spot in the parks of some of these neighborhoods so they could all come out to that one spot and get their beer. Then that led to those neighborhood organizers bringing in food trucks for people to get food while they came to pick up beer. Then we just started setting up at 2-4 neighborhood parks per day, creating all these little pop-up events. It kept us in business.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

The first time I ever pitched to investors, I was able to get a group to invest everything needed. Unfortunately, I learned very early on that they were not a good fit. They were used to OWNING businesses, not having business PARTNERS. They really wanted to take the company in a direction that was all about them and not about our story and our branding. Eventually, I knew that I could never be in business with them. So I told them they could either do it without me or I would buy them out. The problem is, I didn’t have any money to buy them out. So, I reached out to everybody I knew who either had money or knew people with money.

A lady that I used to buy slot machines from for our casino replied back to me and told me she had a friend I should meet. This was 1 day after I told my investors I would buy them out. So, I drove 2 hours away the next day to meet this guy. This was my second ever pitch. I met him at a brewery his friends owned. I brought sample for him to try, my business plan and a story. After 30 minutes if hearing my story and my plan and him and his buddies loving the beer, he wrote a check. The next day I bought out those investors.

We had enough money to get started in the co-op, but we needed much more to build out our own location. We were working on an SBA loan when COVID hit. We were told by the bank that the loan would have to be put on hold. We had already signed a lease on our new building, so we had no choice but to find the funding.

Then someone from our bank said they had heard of a program similar to SBA, but it was through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Being Native American, I would qualify. A few months later we were closing on a $1million loan through the BIA.

Contact Info:

• Website: skydancebrewing.com
• Instagram: @skydancebrewing
• Facebook: skydancebrewing
• Twitter: skydancebrewing
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9sGl8Zhl1VjJgk7oAf0Krg/featured