Startup Confidential

Send us Fan Mail Trade shows need to get blown up, from a design perspective. Enough with the booth-cages. The pandemic has shown what we really can’t get done face-to-face. And it’s those zones  of human persuasion that industry events should re-design themselves to facilitate and monetize. Let’s kill the trade show, and make events for ALL stakeholders work much better.   Your Host: Dr. James F....

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I explore WHY exactly the initial product line you launch, across all touchpoints, is unlikely to be really a finished line. Not only will you need to iterate, but you’ll need to learn from your fan to do it. In-market learning is really the only way for many premium CPG brands to fine tune the nuances of their product symbolism, package design and marketing commu...

Send us Fan Mail Hey, know anyone who hired their buddy to do pack design or social media marketing? Yeah, of course, you do. In my latest podcast episode , I share some sociological reasons founders of early-stage brands don't want to hire 'friends' as service providers. If you're an investor, take note as you advise your portfolio brands. This selection behavior is super comm...

Send us Fan Mail 80% of CPG brands never make it past $500K trailing annual sales. It's a cruel reality. Often, the end of the business is self-inflicted due to business inexperience. Too often, though, it's based on overly ambitious timelines to scale fed by reading anecdotal cases that trade media love to cover. The unicorns distract too many starting out. This episodes revisits the br...

Send us Fan Mail I’ll probably lose some LinkedIn Connections once again with this content. Don’t care. The reality is that new founders to retail CPG need to get super real about 3P distributors, especially the national players specializing in natural and organic products. Listen up and learn the one stunning oversight most new founders make when starting to work with UNFI, KEHE, and others.   Yo...

Send us Fan Mail Goldilocks was right. The middle path is the way forward when you are trying to scale quickly and actually get to scale in good enough shape to keep growing in the double digits. Listen in to a ‘dramatic’ reading from my forthcoming audiobook edition of Ramping Your Brand . I think you’ll enjoy it! Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrow...

Send us Fan Mail The more years in the market and, regardless of your actual topline growth rate or scale, the more likely you will no longer be able to notice the subtle signs of underperformance in your business. This is most pronounced when growth is strong. But that's when it's most important to look underneath the topline hood and pressure-test for solid, healthy $ growth. In this e...

Send us Fan Mail Unfortunately, the folks who talk loudest about brand-building are either a) branding agencies, b) venture capitalists or c) overly enthusiastic founders. Curb your enthusiasm. You can design a brand identity, a symbolic system. But, 'brand' is an outcome. It is an outcome based on influencing real human behavior, entering social networks with memorable consumer experien...

Send us Fan Mail It's no secret that Placement is the "P" that dominates strategy among most early-stage consumer brands, selling into retail primarily. And there's no shortage of brokers, fractional sales VPs and consultants ready to focus you on manipulating the trade to win narrowly. The problem with this 'normative' viewpoint is that brands don't grow via TPR...

Send us Fan Mail Retail buyers. Either right now or eventually, you will need to convince buyers you are a key new addition to their sets. In this episode, I share some pros and cons of developing relationships with these important stakeholders. I also discuss why the Skate Ramp is just not on their radar, even though one of your key KPIs - velocity - absolutely is.  Your Host: Dr. James F. Richar...

Send us Fan Mail Well...Well..Well, I never ...I mean, what a rude title!  Then stop writing plans not based on market and consumer data. Then I'll take this episode down right away. It's a plague among early-stage startups in ALL industries. Dataless plans based on wholesale case projections. Your review mirror of case sales to the distributor is not sufficient to make a smart plan for...

Send us Fan Mail You might think saying 'no' is simply the luxury of an established business who has the privilege to turn down an opportunity that isn't dead-on perfect.  But you'd be wrong. Dead wrong.  In this episode, I introduce the perfect training ground for saying no: the onslaught of service providers who 'prey' on the ocean of startups, most of whom will fai...

Send us Fan Mail It's time to share thoughts on one of the more important stakeholder classes for your fast growing early stage brand. I focus on the pros and cons of angels, venture capitalists and private equity firms. I'm very keen on angels for reasons you'll want to listen in and discover. The big challenge for most entrepreneurs is their de-leveraged situation early on up the...

Send us Fan Mail Grab onto your handrails, folks. You may hear the thunderous retort of the entire global branding industry in the middle of this one. Branding is one of the most over-rated arts in the early years on the Ramp. Without a data-refined strategy in place, you just can't finalize your brand's symbolic system. Yes, you can try to research it in advance and over-determine every...

Send us Fan Mail He's back! Jake Huber riffing with me on more advanced topics in retail buyer negotiation. The big one in this final part of the interview is : how to say no...obviously, without ever using this word. :) If you liked Part 1, then you're going to luv, luv, luv this part. Again, I apologize for the horrendous audio on my end. Won't happen again. You have my promise. Y...

Send us Fan Mail Pardon the horrendous audio. This was recorded in a chaotic apartment during the early months of the pandemic. Nevertheless, Jake Huber and I riffed on some very important topics. In Part One we address the #1 thing founders screw up when approaching buyers, how pitching investors and buyers is similar/different and the challenges posed for introverted founders. Hope you like it!...

Send us Fan Mail Sorry to discuss my boring business, but, in this rare case, my internal decision is based on something it might benefit some of you to hear about. I hope so, or this will be a seriously low performing episode! This episode hinges around the concept of coachability. And my foil is the human need for validation. We all have it. We all need social validation or we will eventually co...

Send us Fan Mail The UPCs you initially launch with are very, very unlikely to be the ones that you scale. Maybe the product inside the package is largely the same. But many things will change as you learn and iterate on the basis of market feedback. In this episode I read a few pages from my new book - Ramping Your Brand and hope you enjoy them. Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growt...

Send us Fan Mail As an advisor, this is a tricky topic to wax poetic about, since it might appear atrociously self-serving. Yet, here I go. I want folks newer to business and to CPG specifically to get a lot more critical about how they filter inbound advice, especially the unsolicited kind you tend to get poured on you during events, virtual or real world. There's usually at least a shred of...

Send us Fan Mail My favorite punching bag is the 'door count' tribe. Who are these folks? The folks whose primary KPI is I added me a sh*t ton of doors last year. Boo-yah! Really? Yes. These folks do exist. They're generally the same folks whose case study research was limited to 10 unicorn brands, mostly D2C and funded off enormous wealth. In this episode, I explain in somewhat red...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Mark and I finish our conversation, getting into the details of finding the right co-man and the three different ways to approach professionalizing your production in general. Just don't wing it, people. And don't hire the first warm body. Ever. www.culinex.biz Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions...

Send us Fan Mail Do you own your IP? Do you know the difference between a prototype and a protocept? Founder of Culinex , culinologist Mark Crowell, addresses these questions and more in the first of a two-part guest interview on product development. If anything has NOT changed due to the global pandemic, it's the laws of product development. It's science folks. Learn it or outsource it....

Send us Fan Mail If you thought your career was messed up, then entertain yourself with the Preface from my new book - Ramping Your Brand. I share the bizarre twists of fate that illogically led to my current expertise in guiding growth strategy for emerging consumer brand. As we all muddle through the pandemic, have a laugh at my expense...or maybe three. www.rampingyourbrand.com Your Host: Dr. J...

Send us Fan Mail The current global pandemic is a massive temptation to over-react to near-term signals. This is especially true when it comes to business strategy in consumer packaged goods. In this episode, I use the COVID-19 social distancing reality as a foil to remind us of what strategy is, when you know you should change it, and why you need to really understand your category fundamentals n...

Send us Fan Mail Who drives your brand's adoption? And why? In my new book, I break down four rough segments of consumers who trade up to premium CPG brands. Each segment has a set of macro-drivers that affect their near-term vs. long-term value to your business. Spoiler: most founders fit nicely into just one segment...ahem...the one that doesn't scale brands. Have a listen. And buy Ram...