Care Force: Hi Sign Brewery

Hi Sign Brewing is one of Austin's newest micro breweries.

Right now, there's lots of beer making going on ahead of the grand opening. For the owner, Mark Phillippe, a big part of this dream came together when he was deployed to Afghanistan as a Marine 1st Lieutenant.

"For most of the deployment, I was with 35 marines in a patrol base patrolling every day, canals, rivers, essentially walking through a minefield looking for IED's..it was a difficult mission."

It is certainly a different mission now, operating a small brewery, but Mark is using the same skills that brought him and his men through the seven month mission in Helmand Province.

"As a platoon commander, you've got squad leaders, you give them the task and the purpose. The what and why and let them go. And with brewing when I hired a brewer it was important to me to make sure he had that autonomy. That we built a trust like 'I know you've got skills and you trust that I've got other skills. I'll make sure you have the resources to accomplish the mission'."

Andrew Shelton is the head brewer Mark hired and he's on board with his bosses Marine management style.

"There's a general rule of fairness. You've done x,y, and z...This is what I've promised as advertised and I've been in the private sector, there's a lot of wishy-washy. He's nope. This is it."

It was a seven year process of making Hi Sign Brewery a reality, after the marines mark took the classes, learned the business, found the investors and made use of government assistance programs.

But his time in the military is never very far away. His flak jacket in his office reflects his respect for his old comrades in arms and his time with them. "It was on that deployment where things came together and drove my focus, because in a place like that...We'd suffered a casualty, i lost an engineer over there..and the closer you bond the more you talk about stuff..you often have that conversation about what are you doing next. What you gonna do when you get out."

The grand opening at Hi Sign is March 18th but they are open right now. 

To learn more about the brewery, check out their website by clicking here.