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How I negotiated a salary in beer

  • 2 min read

This week I presented to Matthew Stone‘s class at Chico State on the topics of beverage marketing and brand storytelling.  Matthew is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Recreation, Hospitality and Parks Management and he and I connected after he read the article in the Sacramento Bee about my study of the Sacramento Craft Beer Market.  I had a great time and the class was surprisingly engaged seeing that it’s the end of their semester at CSU.  Of course, with a college-aged audience, talking beer, wine and spirits is generally more interesting than other topics…

The presentation was titled, “Market Your Craft,” because not only is it my new brand, but I think it’s an appropriate way to frame my approach to craft beverage brand building.  In it I walked the students through the following areas of craft storytelling:

  • What are brands?
    • Be purposeful
    • Be original
    • Be yourself
  • What is your niche?
    • Brand story
    • Customer
    • Competitors
  • What is your investment?
    • Content strategy
    • Budget
    • Resources
  • What’s next
    • Customer focus
    • Rebranding
    • Earned versus paid media

Throughout the presentation I drew parallels with your personal brand, which has been a focus of mine since starting my LLC in March and with my recent rebranding effort.  I believe that most of the students in that class will work for themselves as a consultant or freelancer someday, given the direction business is headed.

Presentation to Chico State Hospitality Management students on 12/6/18.

You can find the presentation here if you’re interested.  Great being back on campus – there’s just an energy there you can’t recreate in business settings.  Of course, it made me have a slight twinge of regret for not taking the adjunct professor role there in 2017 when they asked me to teach a couple Marketing 101 classes.