For founders building something real, from a founder who did. Early-stage retail and consumer packaged goods, where the decisions are large, permanent, and being made by one person at eleven at night.
Who this is for
Alone at the top, earlier than anyone warned you
You’ve got a product that works and customers who want it. What you don’t have is anyone to think with who has actually done this, isn’t trying to sell you something, and doesn’t need you to look confident.
Retail and CPG punish specific mistakes in specific ways. Take the wrong channel too early and you’ll spend two years unwinding it. Price for the listing rather than the business and you’ll grow into a loss. Hire the impressive person instead of the right one and you’ll carry them for a year because firing them would mean admitting it.
I’ve made versions of all three.
What we do
Your biggest decisions, while they’re still decisions
The big calls, as they come. Brand, channel, operations, hiring, capital, and the hardest one, focus. Not a curriculum. Whatever is actually in front of you this month.
A backbone, before it’s forced on you. Numbers you look at weekly, a rhythm for decisions, reporting that means something. Most founders build this in a panic, usually the week a lender or an investor asks for it. It’s much cheaper to build it calmly.
Introductions, where I have them. I’ve spent fifteen years in this industry and seven on its national board. If I know the person you need, I’ll make the introduction and stay out of the way.
A bias toward durability. I’ll consistently push you toward the choice that leaves a business standing in five years over the one that looks better this quarter. That’s not caution. It’s what I wish someone had pushed me toward.
Why me
I own one of these
I own and run a privately held natural body care manufacturer, bought out of a restructuring. I wrote the turnaround plan in the first thirty days and took more than three million dollars to the bottom line inside a year. Before that I ran a fifty million dollar retailer and led its sale.
So I know what the lot codes are, what a format change does to a retail partner’s sell-through, and what it feels like to sign a personal guarantee. Advice from people who have never done that is easy to nod at and impossible to act on.
The outcome
The founder I needed a mentor to become, sooner
Better decisions, faster, made by you rather than for you. Structure underneath the company before something breaks. And not being alone with it, which turns out to matter more than any single decision we’ll discuss.
What it costs
Value first, paid after
A minimal monthly retainer to begin, then a fair share of the value created, agreed in conversation rather than set by a formula.
Never hourly. If you’re early, you shouldn’t be watching a clock while deciding whether to ask me something, and I shouldn’t be rewarded for the conversation taking longer.
The point of the small front end is that I’m genuinely fine if the back end never arrives. That’s what lets me tell you not to do the thing you’re excited about.