Recent Posts

Last week I shared a short excerpt from my most recent talk and couched one of my core beliefs with a caveat… Belief: Craft as a whole is still an underdog, and there is a clear path forward to profitable growth. Caveat: Without a strong vision, a well-thought-out strategy, and intelligent leadership team decision-making, the […]

Spend just a short amount of time around me and you pretty much get the gist of what I’m all about… Yes Chris, we know. Numbers, operational discipline, and accountability. Run the brewery like a business. Remove the bottlenecks to growth. Yup, you’ve got me pegged. But one thing I don’t always get across… Is

Alright, so we’re a week back from the NC Craft Brewers Conference… And what an amazing conference! The NC Brewers Guild knows how to put on an A+ performance. Today I want to recap a few takeaways that I think reflect that state of the industry as a whole. Shoot, this may the precursor to

In Part 2 of our Holiday Dip series, we’re transitioning from defense to offense through what we’re calling: creative revenue generation. But first… Turning The Holiday Dip On Its Head It’s a pretty badass paragraph: “Our actions may be impeded… but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and

This is Part 1 of our Holiday Dip Series, where we tackle the problem from the finance side of the fence. But first, before we get started… “Do we have enough?” “Will we have enough?” These are the age-old questions I get from most of the breweries I speak to about the topic of cash

The World Series and the New England Patriots… If your market happens to be attached to either of these two entities, you’re one of the few lucky breweries this year to be gifted with a nice, healthy boost in sales this holiday season. Stadiums are buying. Parties are happening and drinks are flowing. Loyal fans

Last week we addressed a real truth embedded within any successful strategy: Timing matters. The day after that post went out I had a meeting with a client to discuss expansion strategy… And if there’s anything that should fall into the “timing matters” category, it’s EXPANSION. Believe it or not, as of writing, I am

Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates fame, is well known for the guiding principles that: First established his investment philosophy. Later were honed and refined into a management system they use to run the firm. He credits them as “the foundation of Bridgewater’s success,” and it’s not a mystery why this is the case… They externalize

This is the last leg of the Ownership Bottleneck Series where we answer the penultimate question: What’s the owner’s role? But before we dig in, in Part 3 of this series, we spent a bit of time talking about, well… our feelings and stuff. Specifically, why it so often feels isolating and lonely as an

In Part 2 of this series, I made a brief allusion to Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL and all-around badass. And he has a thing or two to say about accountability, the topic of this portion (Part 3) of the Ownership Bottleneck Series. In fact, he wrote an entire book about the topic. From Extreme