Every guy’s dream p1 - Military - Start Your Own Business - Military Times Edge

Talk about living the dream. Pull up a stool and let one of the Culbertson brothers pour you a cold one and tell you all about it.

“This is the coolest job I’ve ever had,” says Zac Culbertson, with the simple satisfaction that comes from being your own boss and being in the middle of a party every night.

Last year he and his brother Matt scraped together $150,000 in cash and credit to buy the Cowboy Café in Arlington, Va.

“It is like living a dream,” says Zac, “but the flipside is that you’re also the host of the party. It’s a lot of hard work.”

Not that they’re strangers to hard work. The past few years, both have been food-service grunts working their way up from waiters to mug-slinging bartenders.

Before that, though, both did tours in the Marine Corps. Zac was a truck driver and Matt was in recon. It’s not lost on the brothers that the Corps was born in a bar even before the nation itself. Somehow it just seems right that their lives as business owners would be born in one, too.

Transformation station

“My brother and I were lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time,” says Matt. “The previous owner was ready to sell.” And the brothers were ready to transform a beaten-down old dive with holes in the wall and drunks on the floor into a family-friendly hipster hangout that is equal parts “Cheers” and “Top Chef.”

Indeed, they’re already looking to buy another place, and their youngest brother Joe — an Air Force combat controller still on active duty — is ready to shift fire from special ops to the special of the day and join the family team.

Here are a few things the Culbertsons learned along the way.

Learn the industry

Just because you like beer doesn’t mean you know how to run a bar, much less put together a winning menu, hire and fire staff, negotiate with distributors, balance books, and accomplish the many other details that come with owning your own place.

“Go work for a T.G.I. Friday’s-type place first for at least six to 12 months and learn the industry,” says Zac. “A lot of this doesn’t necessarily come naturally, and some of the corporate places have really good systems for teaching it.”

Shoot a clear azimuth

Banks demand business plans for small business loans. Instead of hitting up bankers, Zac and Matt maxed out credit cards, took out second mortgages and negotiated some creative financing with the previous owner to buy the Cowboy Café.

But they still put together a business plan. “I’m not embarrassed to say I used a service to help put our business plan together,” Zac said. It cost them more than $1,000, but they say it was worth every penny.

“It gave us a clear road map of what we needed to accomplish,” Zac said.

Raise the bar

“We literally had holes in the wall when we bought the place,” Zac said. With a lot of their own elbow grease, and a hired gun for the work they didn’t have the chops for, the Cowboy Café had its own makeover within days.

And then there was the other kind of cleanup. “There were some regulars from before we bought the place who were bad for the bar — serial drunks, or just bad in other ways,” Zac said. So a few were invited not to come back anymore.

Meanwhile, they brought on a chef who could spice up the menu from standard sliders-and-fries bar fare to impress-your-date foodie fare like muffaletta panini and jerk-spiced pork loin with pineapple chutney.

Harness PR Power

A new logo, designed by a graphic designer friend, completed the new look. Coupons, fliers and a regular diet of themed parties and live music helped start bringing in the crowds.

“Once people saw that it had changed and was really a different place, business just started booming,” Zac said.

“That’s really been the most enjoyable part,” Matt added, “watching the transformation.”