Startup Confidential
Who is it For? Founders of CPG start-ups. What is It? Zero B.S. perspective on running your start-up well, understanding the biases of industry stakeholders and getting the industry to work for you, not the other way around. When? Every month. Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions.com If you want to take my founder's Quiz to see if you are ready for exponential growth, please visit : www.premiumgrowthsolutions.com/founder_resources and sign up for my e-mail list to download it. Transcripts and an entire episode library are on my podcast site. https://www.premiumgrowthsolutions.com/podcast
Episodes
173 episodes
Episode 173 - OMG! Stop Blindly Saying 'Yes' To Buyer SKU Requests
CPG brands that start in retail easily get sucked into fulfilling requests for exclusive UPCs. Negotiating your way out of these situations, including walking away, is critical to focused strategic growth. Listen in as I kick your sales team in...
Episode 172 – Stop Recruiting for Executive Presence!
If you’re running a high-growth business, chances are you’ll need to reach out to an executive recruiter at some point. When you do, make sure you watch for this dangerous filter of “executive presence.”
Episode 171 - Every Founder’s Secret To Motivating Employees
In this episode, I walk founders through a key difference in perspective that founders and employees have, a difference that never, ever goes away. It does not doom any high-growth business, but you need to accept it to succeed as a leader.
Episode 170 - Please Stop Copying Competitors’ Moves! Here’s Why.
Most high-growth consumer brands need to re-position as they scale. The niche positioning that got you into the eight figures will drive you into a ditch. In this episode, I share four advanced tips I once kept behind an online training paywall...
Episode 169 - Measuring Marketing Effectiveness The Right Way
Don’t confuse anything I’m about to talk about with Marketing Mix Analytics, an old BigCo statistical machine designed to distinguish which of 15 marketing buckets had the most influence on sales growth in the past year. Just mentioning the top...
Episode 168 - Why Startups Are like Flowers In the Desert...
A humorous exploration of my favorite analogy for the experience of growing a consumer brand, whether or not you make it onto the Skate Ramp. It's harsh out there.
Episode167 - Forget the ‘A’ Players; How to Build a Better Team
Consider the unconventional org move as a scrappy founder. This episode briefly explains the mistake many high-growth founders make once they can hire a recruiting firm. Private equity has twisted much of the hiring ecosystem to suit itself, no...
Episode 166 - Filter Advice Like a Boss - Interview w/Michelle Razavi Pt. 2
This episode is part 2 of my interview with Michelle Razavi of Elavi protein brownies, where we delve deeper into the psychology of consumers who love her products AND the psychology of highly successful founders. The most important point she m...
Episode 165 - Rising Stars Series - Michelle Razavi of Elavi - Pt. 1
Elavi is the second brand in my Rising Stars Series. Michelle Razavi, Founder and CEO of Elavi Protein Brownies, joins for this two-part series. She tells the story of how she repeatedly adjusted their product mix to make their mission of clean...
Episode 164 - The Seven Traits of Skate Ramp Founders
In the final chapter of Ramping Your Brand, I walk readers through the crucial transformation every new founder must go through - Operator to Strategist to Leader. In some cases, this has happened in a matter of years, or the culture will proba...
Episode 163 - The Benchmark of Benchmarks
The most efficient Skate Ramp brands earn large amounts of money in small geographies. In this episode I explain how to measure this and why it’s so important to set such a high standard for an undercapitalized business early on. You have to li...
Episode 162 - The Staircase Trap - A Growth ‘Curve’ No One Wants
If your brand does not Ride the Ramp, it most likely attained nine-figure scale by stair-stepping its way upwards. Distribution gains with sustained, not growing velocity. In this episode, I explore what causes this and why you should get off t...
Episode 161 - The Forgotten Variable That Destroys Marketing Efficiency
Marketers obsess with platform metrics, because these are the numbers they can tactically control the most. However, buried in every CPG product’s design are hidden sensory variables that work with or work against the efficiency of marketing. L...
Episode 160 - Tired of Protein Everything? Fiber is Next!
Megatrends are ones that grow for decades in a steady linear fashion regardless of hype cycles that occur within that time span. They often start decades before the industry leaders pile on. In this episode, I call the not-surprising next trend...
Episode 159 -YoY Growth is Slowing? — Do This!
The survival rate of brands at $1 is brutal enough. And at $10M, even more hit a wall or die. But the real problem that survivors face as they scale into eigth figures is stagnation. The grand delusion is that adding more and more retail accoun...
Episode 158 - Five Must Learn Tips To Court Investors Well
The majority of early-stage brands chase investors way too late and with a mindset of moderate-to-extreme desperation. Investors can smell it, and you attract the worst actors, who, themselves, do not have the track record to develop a deal flo...
Episode 157 - Four Proven Ways To Accelerate Your CPG Brand
These four tips derive straight from my best-selling business book, referred to by many as “The CPG Bible” for founders new to the industry - Ramping Your Brand. It’s about discipline. The discipline to work on the business and on yourself. Che...
Episode 156 - Planning Acceleration to Prevent Deceleration
Brands crossing the $100M line, roughly speaking, face a privileged danger : deceleration. It happens very quickly once you hit max ACV or even ¾ of your category’s max ACV. If you didn’t prepare for this, you will have to act fast. It’s very h...
Episode 155 - Emerging Brands As Content Studios - How Do You Decide to Do It?
In the last episode I described the content studio revolution inside high growth brands and how it is upending traditional assumptions about how to use promotional agencies, especially social media agencies. Have a listen!
Episode 154 - Brands as Content Studios - How Do You Decide?
The agency-brand partnership axis is evolving really fast as the cost of creating video content plummets with AI. Brands got in earlier on distributing social content from their own desks in the 2010s, but now they can create and distribute at ...
Episode 153 - The Premium Pricing Fork in The Road
It’s possible to have strategic premium pricing and a profitable business model. But this is NOT easy. Few founders spend enough time getting their business model right before they hit the gas. This episode explains why there is such a sharp fo...
Episode 152 - Rising Stars Series : Yoni Reisman of Tip Top Cocktails, Part 2
This is part two of my interview with Yoni Reisman, founder of Tip Top Cocktails. In this episode, we explore how he came to realize others were better suited to manage the day-to-day operations of the business, a very tough call fo...
.png)
Episode 151 - Rising Stars Series: Yoni Reisman of Tip Top Cocktails
This episode launches a new series I’m calling Rising Stars - Founders new to CPG who have defied the odds, built growing eight-figure businesses without the interference of premature institutional money. This is part one of my int...
.png)
Episode 150 - Poppi vs. Pepsi Prebiotic : WTF?
Every creative mind on LinkedIn has railed against the upcoming launch of Pepsi prebiotic. That’s because it’s NOT very creative. Growth strategy for a legacy brand is very different from what works in the early-stage. Making trends and fol...
Episode 149 - From Sales Execution to a Modern Growth Strategy
Hopping from buyer meeting to meeting may get you into the seven figures, but it won’t garner your business fast growth through $100M and beyond. Not without really lucky amounts of word-of-mouth. Really lucky. Waiting until you’re $10M in ARR ...
