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Happy New Year and welcome to your 36th issue of the Quiet Empire Newsletter. Your newsletters will be arriving in your in box every Tuesday and Saturday (Specifically chosen because for most of us, Mondays are chaos and Saturday is a good catch up day)
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Colorado’s Most-Awarded Brewery Did Something Totally Unique
Some companies make lofty promises to investors and never deliver. Others use those dollars to unlock new levels of scale.
That’s Westbound & Down’s story. Already Colorado’s most-awarded craft brewery, they opened their doors to investors for the first time to help open a flagship Denver-metro-area location.
With 2,800% distribution growth since 2019 and a retail partnership with Whole Foods, it’s no shock investors maxed out that campaign in less than 60 days.
But it’s what comes next that’s even more exciting. Fresh off Brewery of the Year honors at the 2025 Great American Beer Festival, W&D is scaling toward 4X distribution growth by 2028.
This is a paid advertisement for Westbound & Down’s Regulation CF Offering. Please read the offering circular at https://invest.westboundanddown.com/
In today’s issue:
As the year closes, there’s a quiet pressure that shows up for many people.
Not from others—
from inside.
A sense that something should have moved faster.
That a decision should have been made sooner.
That progress should look more obvious by now.
I want to offer a different perspective—one I’ve come to trust after watching many cycles come and go.
Being careful is not the same as being stuck.
In fact, for thoughtful people, caution is often a form of progress that just doesn’t announce itself.
The loudest voices online tend to reward speed.
But experience rewards something else entirely:
Judgment.
Knowing when not to move.
Knowing what doesn’t fit anymore.
Knowing when patience is the smarter form of leverage.
Most of the people I respect didn’t arrive where they are by chasing momentum.
They arrived by avoiding the wrong paths long enough for the right ones to reveal themselves.
That’s not delay.
That’s discernment.
If you’re ending this year without a dramatic pivot, launch, or breakthrough—
you haven’t failed a test.
You’ve likely passed a quieter one.
The ability to wait without numbing yourself with noise is a skill.
It compounds, even when it doesn’t look productive.
Quiet Empire exists for people who recognize that.
There’s nothing to prepare for here.
Nothing you need to catch up on.
Just a reminder that moving carefully is still moving.
Thank you for reading this year.
To health and prosperity for 2026…
—Patrick
If you’re curious how I personally approach this—without launches or pressure—I’ve written more about it here. |