Who Am I?
I’m a Marketing, Advertising and Promotion Executive with over 30 year’s experience in consumer goods and retail, working with Fortune 500 food giants, large family-owned and regional brands, right on through to disruptive food start-ups.
I enjoy the different challenges of each –plus knowing the common challenges they all face –whether they’re Nestle’ or El Monterey or Sprouted Minds – as they are all in the same retail
and e-commerce universe!
Whether you have a small growing food business or are looking for new channels of distribution or want to know how to better work with your brokers and co-packers, I can help.
And I can do it without breaking the bank. I call it “Consulting Redefined’, because I ‘partner’ with you and your company, working as you need it, prioritized and budgeted –whether thru fees, shared revenue or even equity positions, I succeed when you do – because that’s the way it should be!
NexxtLevel Marketing and Kitchen-2-Shelf are Uniting to become NexxtLevel Brands
Getting Started
All businesses begin as an idea. Great businesses, little businesses, bad businesses, big businesses – all start with a spark in the brain of one or more people. So if you have an idea –welcome to the club!
Now let’s talk about your idea – where is your idea living now? Just in your head – between you and friends and family?
Maybe you’ve sketched some things out on paper –or made up a batch of sauce in your kitchen??
This is usually called “Aspirational” --you’ve thought about having a business –but haven’t yet gone into business.
Lots of people have ideas about businesses –better ways of doing things –a creative streak that might be shared –or maybe a dream of owning something of their own instead of working for someone else.
Well, lots of people have ideas – and then, frankly, that’s where it ends –only a small minority ever takes steps to make their ideas a reality. Click below and get a worksheet to help you get started.
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Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
Just Started Up?
Start-ups represent the next phase in the life of a business or a brand and are usually the time from the business 'officially' starting (legal entity, checking account, products made or services provided -- and key: actual revenue) through about 2 years of business
It's a very exciting time!!!
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Seeing your idea come to reality
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Launching and maybe seeing your product in a store or signing your first client - getting a new account.
Start-ups are run really lean and mean --even those with some funding. In the packaged-goods business (which is most of the stuff you see in Target, Walmart or any grocery or drug store), the first two years are about getting distribution and selling your product into retail 'channels' -- usually starting with small local stores (who are entrepreneurs like you!!)
However, Start-ups are also the most likely businesses to fail.
Depending on which business school report you look at, it can be as high as 90% --but no one goes lower than 75% --which is 1 of 4 survive in the best case. Why?
Well, there are a host of reasons, but at NexxtLevel, we think the primary one is that people go into a start-up with not enough knowledge about their product or service category, no real ideas of how the 'market' works and usually horribly under-funded.
What is particularly sad is that most of those critical aspects could be improved dramatically with proper research and professional counseling.
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