This Is Not Your Hobby

Episodes 26 and 27 made the case that social media can't be your whole plan. This one is where the alternatives live. Julie sits down with Em Hutto, owner and operator of RadCraft and a PR and marketing pro for the entire craft beverage supply chain, to get specific about the unusual, overlooked, and even slightly weird ways to market a beverage brand or a hospitality business. Underrated channels, realistic PR for small brands, partnerships outside the industry, and beyond.

Best For:

Craft beverage and hospitality brand owners (beer, cider, wine, spirits, NA, hemp) who've tried the usual channels and want to know what else is out there.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The weirdest marketing idea Em ever talked a client into, and if it worked
• What brands that say "we've tried everything" have usually skipped
• Channels Em uses with clients right now that most beverage brands don't know about
• What a realistic PR effort looks like for a small brand, and what the first steps should be
• The difference between a press release and a pitch
• Why niche publications can still be relevant to your brand
• How to find and structure a partnership outside the industry (the bike shop, the climbing gym, the local tourism association)

Mentioned in this episode:

Em Hutto, RadCraft

Hi From Durango

Episode 26: Stop Boosting Your Posts

Episode 27: Find A Smaller Pond

Mass Brewers Conference, November 2

Vermont Craft Brewers Conference, November 12-13

North Carolina Craft Brewers Conference, Winston-Salem, November 15-17

Proof, the NYHMS dashboard hub

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The most common question Julie hears at conferences is "how do I make more money through social media," and it's the wrong question. Social is an awareness tool, not a cash register. You don't control the algorithm, it doesn't reach every customer, and everyone else is already there. If it's your whole marketing plan, you're one algorithm change away from invisible, and you're competing for attention next to brands that can outspend you a hundred to one. In this episode, Julie makes the case for diversifying into niche marketing channels most beverage and hospitality brands never consider, walks through four worth a look, and gives you a simple way to pick the one or two that fit your brand.

Best For:

Small craft beverage and hospitality brand owners (beer, cider, wine, spirits, NA, hemp) who've built their marketing on social media and are ready to stop renting.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why "how do I make more revenue through social media?" is the wrong question, and what Julie asks instead
• The four reasons social can't be your whole plan: you don't control the algorithm, it's not a cash register, it doesn't reach everyone, and everyone else is already there
• The small fish, big pond problem— and why an emerging brand can't win a spend war with the giants
• Pinterest as a private event revenue channel, and why the event planner is on it months before they book
• Branded mobile apps as a retention and loyalty channel you actually own
• Streaming and programmatic ads for reaching the under-35 customer who's skipping everything else
• Special interest partnerships (travel, food, sports, hobbies) as a pre-qualified audience the big brands ignore
• A five-step way to pick your one or two niche channels and give them a fair ninety-day test

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 26: Stop Boosting Your Posts

Craft Brewers Conference

Em Hutto from RadCraft, Episode 28 guest

Great American Beer Festival, Denver

Mass Brewers Conference, November 2

Vermont Craft Brewers Conference, November 12-13

North Carolina Craft Brewers Conference, Winston-Salem, November 15-17

Proof, the NYHMS dashboard hub

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Meta and Google ads still work, and for a small beverage brand they're still some of the cheapest ways to get in front of the right people. But the platforms changed the rules this year. AI "enhancements" are on by default, the opt-out switches are buried, the boost button is a cash grab with a friendly font, and if you're not watching, the robots will rewrite your ads and spend your money doing it. Julie walks through what changed, what to turn off, when boosting is actually okay, where the AI helps, and the four numbers that tell you whether or not any of it is working.

Best For:

Small craft beverage brand owners and operators (beer, cider, wine, spirits, NA, hemp) who are spending money on Meta or Google ads, or about to.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• What changed on Meta and Google in the last six to nine months, and why both platforms are pushing you toward handing them the keys
• The real story of Meta's AI rewriting a taproom's ads to promote food trucks and live music that don't exist, and why it's happened to Julie's own brands too
• The 3 kinds of damage AI ad enhancements do (fake copy, fake images, overspend) and where the off switches actually live in Meta and Google
• Google keyword match types explained, and why broad match is a budget leak when you're starting out
• Why boosting a post is for emergencies only, and what a real campaign gives you that a boost never will
• Why beginners should run everything manually first, and which AI features are worth handing back to the machine later
• The 4 numbers to check every week
• Why your state guild membership is an investment, not an expense

Mentioned in this episode:

Meta Ads Manager: Advantage+ creative enhancements (ad set and ad level), Advertising Settings dashboard, campaign and account spending limits

Google Ads: keyword match types, negative keywords, automatically created assets, final URL expansion, AI Max for Search

Episode 19: Use AI Like a Grown-Up

Episode 24: Your Distributor Wishes You Knew This with Melissa Johnston of Tryon Distributing

Virginia Brewers Conference, Richmond

Wyoming Brewers Summit

Great American Beer Festival, Levitt Pavilion, Denver, first weekend of October

Proof, the NYHMS dashboard hub

GuestWork waitlist

RouteWork waitlist

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Docs, sheets, exports, and dashboards scattered across the cloud, all of it looking great and none of it telling you what to do. This episode, Julie gets personal about the data overwhelm that pushed her to build Proof: a new analytics-plus-action tool that pulls your whole beverage business into one live dashboard, tells you the story your numbers are actually telling, and hands you the moves that matter. It's technology and human insight together, minus the tech-bro and minus the chatbot.

Best For:

Small and emerging craft beverage brands buried in data with no time to make sense of it.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why consolidating your data is only half the job — and what's actually missing
• The three traps every brand falls into: scattered tools, gut-call decisions, and useless robot summaries
• How Proof consolidates, guides, and clarifies your numbers into a Monday-morning plan
• Why this isn't another AI dashboard, a tech bro who's never worked the industry, or generic chatbot advice
• How it works start to finish: discovery call, view-only access, dashboard build, and the read
• The three ways in — The Read, The Debrief, and The Huddle — and how channel-based pricing works

Mentioned in this episode:

Proof — See It All, Pricing in the Open

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Most brands pour everything into consumer marketing and then go quiet to the people who actually decide their fate at wholesale — the buyers, the reps, the accounts. This week Julie sits down with Melissa Johnston, VP of Strategic Development at Tryon Distributing and a 20-year veteran across all three tiers, to hear what the buyer's seat actually wants to see. If you sell into distribution, or you're trying to, this is the B2B marketing wake-up call you didn't know you needed, plus how to do it all without tripping a single compliance rule.

Best For:

Small and emerging craft beverage brands selling — or trying to sell — into wholesale and distribution.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why marketing to buyers and reps is the gap almost every small brand is ignoring
• What a distributor's brand-picker looks for before they ever taste your product
• How to make your distributor reps actually want to sell your brand
• What separates a sell sheet or buyer email that gets read from one that gets trashed
• The TTB compliance line for using social media and digital ads to support wholesale sales — what you can and can't say
• How to market a brand-new category (like hemp beverage) to a distributor who's never carried one
• The one or two wholesale-marketing moves to start this week, even with no time and no budget

Mentioned in this episode:

Melissa Johnston, VP of Strategic Development, Tryon Distributing (@tryon_distributing)

Kick Fizz, distributed statewide in NC by Tryon Distributing

Proof — Julie's New Offer

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There is something out there for every brand at every budget and every stage, so let's walk through some modern models to help you get to work. Five of them, to be exact! In this episode, Julie breaks down sales representative strategies and how to choose the best one for your brand.

Best For:

Small, emerging craft beverage owners and decision makers assembling sales teams on a budget.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Julie's five sales representation models, and what kinds of brands they work best for
• How to choose a sales rep model. Hint: The choice should reflect your current business climate, not the one you're striving for.
• Questions to ask before you make hiring moves

Mentioned in this episode:

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Hemp Beverage Alliance Action Center - Send a message instantly and directly to your local representatives.

More info about what's happening in hemp beverages at the federal level

US Hemp Roundtable Petition

Consumers and wholesalers are two vastly different audiences, and your brand should communicate to them as such. In this "tough love" episode, Julie breaks down the basics of a wholesale newsletter, and identifies the elements you're probably getting wrong.

Best For:

Small craft beverage brand owners, salespeople, and marketers who support the brand's wholesale efforts.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The difference between wholesale and consumer audiences and their email behaviors
• What NOT to include in your wholesale newsletter
• Julie's five tactics for glowing up your wholesale newsletter that get results
• Suggestions for places to include brand storytelling in your sales strategy (Hint: It's not in your wholesale newsletter)

Mentioned in this episode:

Not Your Hobby Marketing Services

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Everybody keeps yelling "AI is coming" and most small beverage brands still have no clue whether they even show up when a drinker asks ChatGPT where to grab a local beer, cider, or canned cocktail. In this episode, Scott Kolbe of Market Your Craft breaks down answer engine optimization — basically the AI cousin of SEO — and the cheap, low-tech moves any small brand can make to actually get found. No big budget, no dev team, no computer science degree required. Just a few smart tweaks to the website you already have.

Best For:

Small craft beverage brand owners who keep hearing "AI" and want to know what to actually do about it instead of nodding along nervously.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why AI search hands people a short, credibility-ranked answer instead of ten pages of blue links — and what that shift means for whether your brand gets named at all
• The authority signals AI actually reads: reviews, press mentions, and social proof (and how to stack them in your favor)
• How to write event descriptions and FAQ pairs on your top landing pages so AI can find and quote you
• The one file (LLMs.txt) you can drop into your website's root directory to point AI models at your best pages
• Why an out-of-date retail locator might be quietly costing you sales in AI results
• How to get customers reviewing you on Google, Untappd, and Reddit — the platforms AI leans on
• Which AI model to start with, why Scott leans toward Claude for data protection, and why the $20/month tier is plenty for most brands
• The "treat it like a new intern" mindset that keeps you out of trouble — including what financial info to keep far away from it

Mentioned in this episode:

Scott Kolbe, Market Your Craft

RadCraft

Claude

ChatGPT

Gemini

StoryBrand AI

From the Not Your Hobby world:

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More Free Tools and Everything Else

Most small craft beverage brands are either paying for too much software, paying for the wrong software, or paying for software they signed up for once and never actually used. The comment section on Facebook is great for vibes, terrible for tech advice. The tool that works for the brand triple your size is almost never the right tool for you.

In this follow-up to last week's AI episode, Julie lays out the four-layer framework for building a craft beverage tech stack that actually serves your business — and walks through how to evaluate any new tool before you buy it. Plus the homework assignment every small brand needs to do this month: the software audit.

Best For:

Small to mid-sized craft beverage brand owners and operators who suspect they're spending too much on the wrong tools and want a clear framework for what they actually need.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The four-layer tech stack framework — foundation, revenue-touching, marketing, and optimization
• What every brand needs at Layer 1, and why nothing else matters until that's in place
• How to right-size your POS, production, and wholesale tools to your actual operation
• Where most brands over-invest in marketing tools they don't need
• Why a lot of Layer 4 tools are being replaced by AI capabilities
• The seven-question filter for evaluating any new piece of software before you buy it
• Your homework: the three-month software audit that will probably save you hundreds a month

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 19 — Use AI Like a Grown-Up

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The whole industry is suddenly talking about AI, and everyone has an opinion. The brands using it well are getting hours back every week and making smarter decisions with less effort. The brands using it badly are generating embarrassing POS materials, asking ChatGPT to write distribution contracts, and feeding sensitive business data into free LLMs that are using it to train their next model. There's a third group — the ones ignoring AI entirely. All three groups are going to be in a very different place a year and a half from now.

In this episode, Julie reframes AI as a smart-but-untrained intern that needs context, guardrails, and supervision to actually be useful — and walks through where AI belongs in a small craft beverage brand, where it absolutely does not, and the privacy and data conversation almost no one is having out loud. Plus an honest take on the heated AI imagery debate from someone who runs a two-person brand of her own.

Best For:

Craft beverage brand owners, operators, and team members who want to use AI strategically — not generically — to free up time, level the data analytics playing field, and make smarter decisions.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• The two choices every craft beverage brand faces with AI right now
• A real-world example of using AI to build a weekly business dashboard from multiple data sources — for clients and for Julie's own brand
• Why thinking of AI as an intern changes how you use it
• Six places AI genuinely earns its keep for a small beverage brand
• Five categories of work where AI absolutely does not belong
• Julie's honest take on the AI imagery debate and how she handles it for her own two-person brand
• The five guardrails every brand needs in place before using AI consistently
• Why "using AI badly is worse than not using it at all"
• What's coming next: the full tech stack conversation in Episode 20

Catch Julie on the road:

June 29 — Pint-Sized Seminar at Tumbleweed Brewing, Albuquerque, NM

Texas Craft Brewery Roundup — Boerne, TX

August — New Jersey Brewers Conference

September — Virginia Brewers Conference

Mentioned in this episode:

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