FAQs

Yeah, I know. This industry has a complicated relationship with consultants, and I get it. A lot of people hang a shingle without ever having actually done the work. I've spent 20+ years on the business side of this industry. I've represented international brewery brands, managed distributors across multiple states, taught at the university level, spoken at the Craft Brewers Conference, and co-founded a beverage brand from scratch. I'm not advising from a theoretical framework. I've done the job. Ask my clients; references are available for prospective consulting partners.

I help emerging craft beverage brands build better business systems so they can sell more and stress less. Specifically: sales strategy, wholesale and distributor management, digital marketing, data analysis, and strategic business planning. Some clients work with me one-on-one as their fractional CMO, CSO, or COO. Some get their whole business read every month through Proof. Some grab a punch card or an audit when they need a specific answer fast. There's an entry point for every budget and every stage of business.

First and foremost: craft beverage brands. Breweries, cideries, wineries, distilleries, RTD brands, NA beverage companies, and hemp and THC beverage brands, from startup to mid-sized. That's the core of my client book and always has been.

I also work with the ecosystem around those brands: state guilds and trade associations, supply chain vendors and service providers, restaurants and hospitality groups, and big annual festivals and large-scale events. If your business touches craft beverage and you want to run a more strategic, profitable operation, we should talk.

The sweet spot is a business that has customers, has traction, and is ready to get serious. If you're bigger than mid-sized, you probably have internal people who do what I do. If you're pre-revenue, start with the free stuff below and come back when you're pouring.

Not at all. Beer is my longest background, but I work across the full craft beverage spectrum, plus food, hospitality, and the supply chain that serves them. I'm also the co-founder of a hemp beverage brand, so if you're in that category specifically, I'm one of the few consultants who understands it from the inside.

Yes. If you sell to or serve the beverage industry (software, packaging, logistics, insurance, design, education, even other consultants), I help you understand how your customers actually buy and how to reach them. I've been your customer for 20+ years, on the brand side and the distributor side. That perspective is hard to buy anywhere else.

No. I work with brands across the US and Canada entirely remotely: video calls, shared Google Drive, Slack or Google Chat between sessions. Geography has never been a barrier.

You're probably ready if: sales have plateaued and you're not sure why, you're wearing too many hats and need systems, you have a distributor relationship that isn't working, your marketing feels scattered and disconnected from revenue, or you're growing fast and need structure to sustain it.

You're probably not ready if you're not in a position to implement changes. Consulting only works if you can actually act on the recommendations. If you're not sure, book a discovery call and I'll give you a straight answer either way.

You don't have to take my word for it, and you shouldn't. Start small: a punch card session costs $500 and you'll know inside an hour whether I'm useful. Or grab the free Brand Archetype Quiz or SEO Report and judge the quality of the work before you spend a dime. For the bigger picture: 75+ beverage businesses helped, client partners listed on the homepage, and references available for prospective consulting partners. And if I don't think I can help you, I'll tell you on the discovery call and point you somewhere free.

Almost certainly. 75+ businesses in, from startups to mid-sized brands, across the US and Canada, in every category from lager to hemp seltzer. My client partners are listed right on the homepage.

But here's the more useful answer: your zip code and your barrel count aren't your business model. The problems I fix, plateaued sales, distributor neglect, marketing that doesn't convert to revenue, show up in every state and at every size. If you think your situation is truly unusual, bring it to a discovery call and let's find out.

Your product is different. Your business problems aren't. Selling, marketing, distributing, and staying profitable run on the same fundamentals whether you make IPA, mead, cold brew, or hemp seltzer. Same game, different ballpark.

What gets customized is the strategy: your brand, your market, your margins, your team. That's exactly what you're paying me for. What doesn't need reinventing is the fundamentals, and you shouldn't have to pay tuition while somebody relearns them on your dime.

Because I've lived it. Twelve-plus years supplier-side, selling brands and managing distributors across multiple states. Seven-plus years consulting emerging craft brands. And right now I'm the COO of a beverage brand, making the same production, pricing, and payroll decisions you are. I know what a NIF form is, how a margin stack works in three-tier, and why "just post more on Instagram" is not a strategy.

Agencies sell you deliverables. I build you a business system and teach you to run it.

Proof is my flagship: your whole business pulled into one live dashboard, with my read on what the numbers mean and what to do about them. Taproom, wholesale, ecommerce, events, marketing, all in one place, with a written summary from a real consultant, not a bot. One-time reads start at $799 and monthly plans start at $399/month plus setup, priced by how many sales channels you run. All pricing is published on the Proof page. No demo required.

It starts with a goal-setting session where we figure out what your brand actually needs, because there's no point paying for things that won't move your needle. From there I build a customized program around your specific challenges: sales, marketing, distribution, team management, data analysis, or some combination. Depending on the program, we meet weekly or twice a month on video, with behind-the-scenes work and direct communication between sessions. Programs start at $2,000/month with a 3-month minimum commitment.

Full-Time is weekly sessions, unlimited deliverables, monthly management reviews, quarterly ownership debriefs, and direct access between sessions. For every hour we're live together, I spend several more working on your brand offline. Part-Time is two sessions a month with the same goal-setting process and between-session support, at roughly half the time and cost. Both require a minimum commitment, because real change doesn't happen in 30 days. Full pricing is on the Work With Me page.

Four hours of consulting time, banked and ready to use whenever you need them. No expiration, no contracts, no long-term commitment. You schedule sessions one at a time, bring your team if you want, and ask me whatever is most pressing. It's $500 for four hours, and yes, that's a better rate than hourly. A lot of my consulting clients started with a punch card; it's the cheapest way to find out what working together feels like.

A professional audit of your digital marketing for $800: website, SEO, social, email, and local search presence, run through professional analysis tools and translated into a report ranked by what to fix first. If you want to keep watching your numbers after the audit, the dashboard subscription is $349/month, updated monthly, cancel whenever. Full details and checkout are on the Liquid Insight page.

Scope. Liquid Insight tracks one slice of your business, your marketing, on a self-serve dashboard. Proof pulls in every channel you run, taproom to wholesale to ecommerce, and adds my monthly written read: three key takeaways, three action items, and a human accountable for both. Plenty of brands start with the slice and graduate to the whole picture.

My on-demand learning library. Four-plus years of recorded sessions on sales, marketing, distribution, data, planning, and branding, plus templates, for $39.99/month. It used to be live group coaching; now it's self-paced, new courses get added periodically, and your whole team shares one membership. No contracts. It's the right fit if you want the education without the price tag of one-on-one work.

Please do. Sessions work best when the people who'll actually implement are in the room. Punch card calls, consulting sessions, Proof Huddles: bring your team at no extra charge. The only thing I ask is that somebody owns the follow-through when the call ends.

No. I'm not here to "fix" you or clean house. Turnover is expensive, and most of the time the problem is missing systems and training, not bad people. My job is to make the team you already have more effective. If there's a genuine structural problem, I'll tell you privately and straight. Recommending layoffs to look decisive isn't consulting, it's theater.

It's all published. No demo, no discovery-call ambush. The quick version: fractional consulting runs $2,000 to $4,000/month depending on part-time, full-time, or fractional C-suite. Proof starts at $399/month plus setup, with one-time reads from $799. The Liquid Insight marketing audit is $800, with an optional dashboard subscription at $349/month. Punch cards are $500 for four hours, hourly consulting is $150, and the Barrel 2 Business library is $39.99/month. Each service page has the full breakdown, and if a number here ever disagrees with a service page, the service page wins.

No, and be suspicious of any consultant who does. I don't control your pricing, your production schedule, your distributor's priorities, or the weather on your festival weekend. What I guarantee is the work: analysis you can trust, strategy built on 20+ years of doing the job, and deliverables on time.

What I can tell you from 75+ engagements: the clients who implement are the ones who see real movement. The clients who don't implement get an expensive binder. That part is up to you.

The published pricing already is the long-term deal: monthly rates assume a real commitment of 3 to 6 months, and punch card hours are cheaper than hourly. I don't haggle, because that would mean my first price wasn't real. If budget is the blocker, say so on the discovery call and we'll find the right entry point instead of a discount.

No. In a three-tier system with a hundred variables I don't control, performance comp turns into an attribution argument instead of a working relationship. You pay a clean fee, and I give you clean advice, with no incentive to push volume over profit or take credit for a hot summer. That independence is a big part of what you're paying for.

For consulting programs, yes. We can discuss flexible payment structures case by case. If budget is a constraint but you need help, say so on the discovery call. The worst that happens is we figure out a different entry point that works for where you are right now.

Refunds are handled case by case. For consulting programs, we'd discuss the situation directly. For courses and digital products, I stand behind the quality of the content, but I'll also be straight with you: the material only works if you apply it. If you put the strategies into practice and don't see results, that's a conversation worth having.

My free email community for craft beverage and food professionals. I send occasional emails with industry trends, straight talk on what's actually working right now, tools and resources for growing your brand, and advice with a healthy dose of humor. No spam, no sales lists, no filler. It's where I share the good stuff for free. Join here.

A free brand identity analysis using the same framework I use with one-on-one consulting clients. You fill out a short form, I analyze your responses, and I send you a custom Brand Identity Summary including your primary archetypes, what they mean for your marketing, and specific next steps. Take the quiz.

A free audit of how your website is performing in local search. Useful if you have a taproom, tasting room, or any physical location people need to find. You give me your URL, I run it through a professional SEO analysis tool, and I send you the results with a summary of what to prioritize first. Results within 3 to 5 business days. Get your report.

Research consistently shows that flexible, self-paced learning works as well as traditional classroom settings, often better, because you're applying concepts in real time to your actual business. That said, the honest answer is: it works if you work it. Watching a session and doing nothing with the information won't change your business. Watching, taking notes, and implementing will.

My podcast for craft beverage owners and operators (though if you're in food or hospitality, you'll learn something too). Every episode tackles a real Bottleneck, a specific recurring problem that slows growth or steals profit, and breaks it down with practical strategies and real-world examples. New episodes every two weeks, roughly 20 to 30 minutes each. Every third episode features a guest expert from inside the beverage industry. Listen here.

Go to the submission page and fill out the form. It takes about two minutes, submissions are completely anonymous, and I read every single one. They directly shape future episodes.

Yes, and I'd love to hear about your event. I'm available for keynotes, breakout sessions, and workshops at industry conferences, guild meetings, and trade events. I've spoken at 40+ stages including the Craft Brewers Conference and CiderCon, and I build custom programming for state guilds and trade associations. Details, session topics, and booking are on the speaking page.

Two training apps I'm building right now. GuestWork trains taproom staff on hospitality that drives revenue, and RouteWork trains distribution sales reps without the ride-along. Both are AI-led, built on everything I've learned in 20+ years of doing the jobs myself, and fully customized to your brand: your ops, your prices, your rules, your team, and your goals. They're not out yet, but each has its own waitlist: join the GuestWork waitlist or the RouteWork waitlist and you'll hear first when doors open.