When you have a group of people in a work environment that are all happy, what that group can accomplish as a whole is pretty incredible.

—CAM, president, Steam Whistle Brewing

IT WAS MY first job in Toronto, Danna’s hometown. I had been eager to take a few one-week jobs in her area, yet I hadn’t had any offers. Well, I had received one offer, but even though my feelings for Danna were strong, I couldn’t bring myself to accept it.

It was for the position of news anchor at Naked News Daily Male. Naked News Daily Male is like any major network’s evening news program, but while the anchor is reporting, he takes off articles of clothing until he’s naked. This tactic saves them from having to add the human-interest story to ensure that the broadcast finishes with a happy ending. I decided to save my family the embarrassment but agreed to the interview option in my underwear—a special half-naked news report. I’ve never been on the set of an adult film, but it felt a bit how I’d imagine that would be—an intimate living room scene, with plush couches, soft lights, cameras rolling in the background, half-naked people walking around—cue sultry music.

Luckily, it wasn’t long after that that Steam Whistle Brewing contacted me.

It was 5:30 P.M. Van Halen’s “Panama” was ripping on the newly installed stereo system of the Steam Whistle Brewing Party Bus, a refurbished, mint-condition 1965 Ford Blue Bird with multimedia center, thirteen-inch LCD flat-screen, iPod plug, and DVD player.

Cam, Steam Whistle’s president and co-founder, was at the wheel. In his early thirties, Cam resembled a surfer fresh from the beach. He wore his hair in a curly mop, laughed easily, and seemed more comfortable in shorts and sandals than business attire.

The twenty-seater bus was part of the brewery’s fleet of vintage vehicles painted Steam Whistle green (somewhere between lime and forest). I sat next to Danna near the back. Ian was in the seat across from us with the video camera we’d purchased the week before. Along with about ten Steam Whistle employees scattered throughout the bus, we were headed toward the Toronto harbor, where Cam’s boat was docked. We were going to surf off the back, then have a barbecue.

Only a half hour earlier, the steam whistle had blown, signaling the end of the workday at the old roundhouse-turned-brewery in downtown Toronto. Cam had announced his spontaneous idea to a group of employees. I’d called Danna, who hurried down to join us. And after a hard day’s work, our excitement followed us as we all filed into the bus.

Now the music rocked the bus’s frame as we rolled through the streets of downtown. Everyone yelled the few words of the chorus we knew, substituting head banging and wailing on our air guitars for the words we didn’t.

Near the front of the bus I spotted Greg, the other co-founder, with a huge childlike grin on his face. The day before, Greg had taught me a valuable lesson. Several years earlier, he was walking through a street festival in Ellicottville, New York, with a friend when they spotted a woman eating fresh-cut fries. Greg said, “Wow, check out those fries. I’d love to try one.” His friend replied, “Let’s ask,” and then walked over to ask if he could try one.

To Greg’s astonishment, she said yes.

Greg was left watching his friend chow down on a few fresh-cut fries. The lesson: “If you don’t ask for the fries, you’ll never get the prize.”

Several years older than Cam, Greg was the father figure of Steam Whistle (likely because he was a father himself). Greg shared many traits with Cam, including a love of doing things simply because they’re fun—things like installing a gigantic stereo system in the Steam Whistle bus.

Testing the breaking point of the new speakers, Cam cranked the volume yet again and sent Van Halen echoing off the downtown skyscrapers. Greg was lovin’ it. He stuck his head out the window and started hollering to passersby. We all immediately followed his lead and began cheering “Steam Whistle!” out the windows. Pedestrians couldn’t help but smile and shout back.

Cam knew when to work and when to party. He blurred the line only when he knew he wouldn’t lose the respect of his employees. He was the first person to tap the keg, the last person still knocking back brews when the party was winding down, and the first one back at the office the next morning. Cam was modest and didn’t rely on others to validate his success—he exuded a relaxed self-confidence that only comes from someone with nothing to prove.

The bus pulled up to a red light. There were a few people standing at the curb, so Cam reached over and opened the door. “Hop in!” he yelled over the music, then beckoned them onto the bus for the ride.

I’d known Cam and Greg a very short time, but I couldn’t help but love these guys.

At the harbor, we all jumped out of the bus, towels, sunblock, and cases of Steam Whistle in hand. Our energy was high as Van Halen still rang in our ears. The expression on my face must have been one of wonder. A fellow employee looked at me with a big smile and said, “Welcome to Steam Whistle, Sean.”

From the beginning, I felt like a part of the team at Steam Whistle. On my first day, Cam offered Ian and me the use of his high-end, $4,000 video camera for the year after finding out that our camera didn’t support wireless microphones. During our first conversation with Greg and his wife, Sybil, they invited me and Ian to stay at their house for the week. Shortly afterward, they extended the invitation to come up to their cottage for the weekend. This project continually reminded me of how many genuinely kind people there are out there. This week I was among some of the best.

Over the week I’d met the majority of the staff. All the way from the brewery floor to the office upstairs it was obvious—people liked to work for this company. After a few interactions with the co-founders, it was easy to see why. Cam and Greg understood that the best way to run a company is to earn the respect of the employees. They recognized that success is best when shared with others and are generous with their wealth, but they didn’t tolerate mean-spirited behavior.

The beer industry is very competitive. Because Steam Whistle is a small microbrewery competing against massive international companies with huge resources, Cam and Greg realized they must focus on their strengths. What Steam Whistle has that these big companies don’t is the close-knit, family-like work environment. The corporate culture it’s created is one of Steam Whistle’s major strengths. Cam and Greg respect all of their employees, listen to their needs, and create a fun work environment; in return the employees give the company their loyalty and hard work.

I wasn’t surprised when I saw that everyone in the office—including Cam and Greg—sat together in one big post-and-beam space with hardwood flooring. No corner offices here. This environment was more conducive to creativity and collaboration, reinforcing the sense of team. I experienced it firsthand in my interactions with the employees.

Brian had worked in the sales department for a little over four years. When I asked what his role in the company was, he refused to give me a definitive answer. He kept saying things like “I am Steam Whistle. This is my family.”

I spoke with another employee, Chloe, about the work dynamic and this sense of company loyalty. She went on and on about how much pride she takes in her job. On bottling days, she told me, a crew of twelve to thirteen people will start at 8:00 A.M. and work a full day on the production line. Most of the people on the line have been with the company for five years or more. There’s great camaraderie among the bottling crew; occasionally a few part-time employees will even take days off from their other jobs to come and work on the line.

“When I’m in the beer store and I see a case of Steam Whistle packaged on the day I worked, I’m like, ‘That was me,’” Chloe said. “I helped put that together.”

After some lake surfing off the back of Cam’s 1974 motor yacht in the Toronto harbor, we sparked up the barbecue. Cam opened the cooler to find a couple of lonely bottles of Steam Whistle well past their due date—what he called “fallen soldiers”—likely left over from the previous summer. He reached in and held one up. The contents had started to break down, and the sunlight struggled to penetrate the resulting cloudy liquid with sediment floating about. Even though we’d brought a couple of fresh cases with us from the brewery, Cam cracked it open and took a swig. “I can’t let a soldier die!” he said.

As it began to get dark, people started to realize that it was a Thursday night and tomorrow was another workday. Half joking, I suggested that we go for another rip in the boat. Cam smiled. “Just say the word.”

I admire that no matter the environment—whether in a meeting with corporate executives, out surfing with buddies on his boat, or back at the office being interviewed in front of our video camera—Cam was always relaxed and completely himself. At the moment, this involved eating a large cucumber that his farmer friend dropped off while Cam answered my questions.

“One thing that I think a lot of young people don’t realize is that it’s not such a scary world out there. In meetings, you think, ‘I gotta be perfect. Everything has to be perfect.’ Then you go in and meet these executives and they’re just human beings. At the end of the day, it’s not as scary a world as people think it is, if you’re relaxed and just being yourself.

“My advice is to get into the workforce, no matter what job you have to take or what you have to do. Because the day you start working is the day you start building usable real-world experience. If you can be positive about whatever job it is you’re doing—even though it may not be your passion or what you want to do for your life—but if you can learn to be positive, then you’re in a position where you’re soaking up the experience.”

At each one-week job I asked my co-workers what they liked most about their work. The most common answer I heard was the people they work with. Chloe loved to work on the production line because of her co-workers. They had fun, took pride in making a good product, and in turn the tough labor required became enjoyable. In thinking back on my different one-week jobs, I realized that my actual job duties had played a small part in whether I had a positive or negative experience. I knew that when my fifty-two weeks were over, it would be all the great people I met and the relationships I developed along the way that I would remember most.

Cam took another bite of his cucumber, then continued. “I’ll never forget, Day One of business class at university. My professor said, ‘The main objective of every business has to be the generation of profit.’ And I sat there and thought, That’s screwed up. None of us started this thing to make profit. We started it to build something. At the end of the day, we go out of business if we don’t make money, but that’s not our primary driving force. I think the companies that end up having trouble are the ones where their number one objective is growth and profit, rather than enhancing the customer experience, making a great culture for your staff, increasing employment, building something special—if those are your objectives, then profits come.”

Cam and Greg had a wealth of knowledge about what it takes to make a successful business out of your passion—after all, they did it. They were living their dream, every day.