So I clicked around their websites and eventually discovered that they could teach me to be a bar inventory auditor for the bargain price of $50,000 - $60,000!
$60,000!!? Who has $60,000 lying around to invest? Doctors? Bankers?
I didn't have $60,000, so instead, I spent the next 18 months working my ass off, experimenting with remedial inventory software. I practiced taking hundreds of inventories before turning my attention to finding clients who needed my services until I finally started gaining some traction. Once I did, my momentum was unstoppable.
I went from bar to bar, simply having conversations with dozens of bar owners/managers, discussing their pain points and asking them questions.
As a result, my portfolio of accounts grew rapidly, from dive bars to sports bars to lounges and clubs, all the way to corporate giants like P.F. Chang's and Outback Steakhouse. With the blueprint system I had developed, I was landing clients like crazy.
My income soared. There were literally thousands of bars that needed help, and I had yet to come across one bar that had met someone like me.
There was absolutely ZERO competition.
Thus, Bar Patrol was officially born and it was thriving.
18 months after my August 2010 meltdown, I was maintaining 8 - 10 full service clients at all times, averaging $250 per week per client.
$100,000 - $130,000 per year.
In addition, I was still helping manage my bar and as my reputation in the area grew, other bars started hiring me for other consulting services at $5,000 per month. The money flowing into my life was beyond my wildest dreams. Entrepreneurship was good!
Subsequently, I started vacationing with the family and I was able to go to barbecues at friends' houses on the weekends because I wasn't in a bar working until 2:00 a.m.
And the pride I felt about my career was (and still is) absolutely surreal.
I don't say any of this to brag. Quite the contrary. After spending years of gloom looking for another career, the gratitude I feel is beyond description. For once in my life, I felt successful.
I was earning $125 - $150 per hour taking inventory which means I had the money and freedom to do anything I wanted.
In 2015 I started receiving emails from random bar managers and bartenders who learned about what I was doing and asked me if I could teach them to do the same thing, because they too did not want to spend $60,000 to learn to become an inventory auditor.
After having a conversation with my wife, I spent the next three months building an online course (the Bar Auditor Master Course) that teaches the exact steps I used to build a 6-figure bar auditing business-and I share everything , the exact same education, for 98% less than Sculpture and Barmetrix charge.
In 2016, the Bar Auditor Master Course took off like wild fire. I have students who have totally gone for it and built 6-figure businesses themselves, and others who simply do it as a side-hustle to earn an extra $3,000 - $4,000 per month on the side.
What's the point to all this? The point is, if you've been in the industry for years and feel like you're stuck, just like I was, as well as thousands of others who make a decent living in this industry but suddenly realize one day that the future is quickly becoming the present, and if they don't do something quickly to change their present, their future will be working in a bar when they're 60, serving white zinfandel to a bunch of old ladies playing bridge in a hotel bar lobby.
I imagine you and I are very similar, the only difference being that my pain become so great that I HAD to do something to change my life, so I spent 18 months crawling through the mud and shit to figure this business out on my own.
I'm like Tim Robbins in the Shawshank Redemption: "Crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side."
To sum all of this up plainly: I teach people to be me...without the crawling through shit part of course. You simply get to stand up and raise your arms and face to the lightening and fluorescent falling rain and rejoice in your glorious freedom. In a matter of weeks.
If you are like me-and countless others-who feel that restless pain I'm talking about...or if you have that entrepreneurial itch deep in your bones that needs to be scratched, and if you have always despised the idea of working in an office, sitting at a cubicle clacking away on a keyboard, perhaps helping bars succeed and becoming a bar inventory auditor is the path for you too.
If so, you can start by downloading my cheatsheet:
7 STEPS TO BECOMING A BAR INVENTORY AUDITOR.
