We recently connected with Veronica Bradley and have shared our conversation below.

Veronica, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

When a family owns a business, the business is family–and I don’t think that’s something anyone can truly understand unless they’ve started and run a business with people they share holidays and homes with.

Our business is with us 100% of the time. It calls us in the middle of the night. It needs constant love and attention. It always wants to borrow money.

But it also provides us with great joy and a sense of pride. When it’s good, we love bragging about it and showing it off. We celebrate its birthday and encourage it to be its absolute best. We want to spend time with it, and we don’t mind helping it.

A family business gives that family challenges that they would otherwise never encounter, which makes them stronger. After all, running a business is tough–really really tough–and it takes hard work to make it work, but it also takes love.

Veronica, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I get asked pretty often how we found ourselves as owners of a brewpub. And I’m still not quite sure, to be completely honest. My husband, Craig, worked at Lakewood Brewing Company (the owners were friends of ours from our advertising jobs). And somehow, that segued into our starting our own thing in Lake Highlands.

We loved Lakewood, and we thought our neighborhood could really benefit from something like it, but far smaller. So, we waited, but no one was taking the leap. And then we started daydreaming of how we would do it, what we could call our pub, and before we knew it, we had a business plan, a really big loan, and were under construction.

Vector Brewing is everything we dreamed of. After a really rough two years (I do NOT recommend opening a business at the height of a global pandemic), we’re hitting our stride. And now we’re thrilled to see what our little pub can do.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social media–what a beast. It’s changed so much in the few years we’ve had the @vectorbrewing account. We primarily use Instagram and Facebook, and each for different things. And our purpose in posting has definitely shifted during our first two years.

I would suggest people get that social media account ASAP to reserve it. And then before posting a dang thing, figure out the purpose of the account. Are you trying to entertain? Are you trying to get people to come in person? Do you want your stuff shared? Are you trying to provide information? Are you selling something specific?

Of course, the answer is most likely yes to all of these questions, but each post needs to have a defined purpose. And it has to communicate that purpose clearly, concisely, and in an appealing way.

And get your audience involved. If someone gives you a nice shout out, thank them. You’re building relationships that will benefit your business.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

COVID devastated small businesses. And we all are dealing with whiplash from changing our entire business models multiple times on the fly without any help. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Contact Info:

• Website: vectorbrewing.com
• Instagram: vectorbrewing
• Facebook: vectorbrewingtx
• Twitter: vectorbrewing
• Youtube: vectorbrewing
• Yelp: never

Image Credits
I took all of the photos myself (Veronica Bradley)