The Meeting Everyone Hates Might Be Your Most Powerful Business Tool
When someone schedules yet another recurring meeting, at best most people’s first instinct is to groan. At worst they see it as a sign of bureaucracy that’s going to slow everything down and eliminate creativity and initiative, at best it’s taking time away from ‘real work.’ Routines are seen
This morning’s jobs report just changed the conversation.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released February’s numbers today, and they weren’t pretty. The U.S. economy shed 92,000 jobs last month, a stunning miss against economist expectations of adding 50,000. The unemployment rate climbed to 4.4%. December was quietly revised from a gain to a
Every CEO/owner will tell you they want to hire the best people.
A-players. Top talent. The best of the best.
And yet, when I walk into many small and mid-market companies as a Fractional CMO or COO and look at who the CEO/owner has surrounded themselves with, it’s often B, C,
The team at Pricklee just closed a $2M seed round and completed a full brand repositioning — evolving from a niche cactus water brand into a mainstream natural hydration powerhouse for everyday consumers. You can now find them on shelves at Whole Foods, Sprouts, HEB and many more to come.I’ve had the privilege of working closely with the Pricklee team
Most challenger CPG and consumer appliance brands growth stalls because they keep operating like insurgents long after the insurgency phase has paid off.
Moving from niche to category leader requires a deliberate shift in behavior, not just more SKUs or sales channels.
Here are the actions that matter most.
1. Stop optimizing for love. Start optimizing for scale.
Early-stage brands
After years of developing and launching innovations across diverse industries and working with countless innovation leaders, I’ve distilled the patterns that leaders repeat which inevitably lead to innovation failure.
The working title: “How Leaders Fuck Up Innovation: An Innovation Book That is Not About Innovation”
Some findings that genuinely surprised me while writing:
• Innovation doesn’t need innovation (seriously)
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Most businesses under $100 million don’t need a COO.In fact, in many, if not most, cases a COO would slow down decision-making, add unnecessary cost, confuse reporting lines, and generally be a drag on the business.But a Fractional or Interim COO like me, that’s a different story. I’m busy, and getting busier, because this is the role many companies need,
Most founders/CEOs of companies between $10M and $100M think their problems sit neatly in one bucket:
⚠️ But the truth? Those buckets are intrinsically linked.It’s not as simple as “a marketing push spikes
Most CPG founders only think they’ve made it when they reach $20M. But the real achievement isn’t $20M it’s $2M.
Hitting $2M means you’ve done the hardest stuff in business: