 Are you a ‘professional’ entrepreneur or just an amateur founder? Start-up land is full of folks new to their industry and even new to capitalism itself. The hordes of amateurs are one reason that public firm employees look down on start-ups traditionally. But, increasingly, even in CPG, there is a caste hierarchy between the pros and the newbs. Despite the disadvantage new founders face, more and more are professionalizing to succeed, very well. But the need to professionalize is more urgent than ever if you want to compete with the growing number of pros in the space.Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions.comPlease send feedback on this or other episodes to: admin@premiumgrowthsolutions.com

Startup Confidential

Episode #56 - The Emerging Caste Hierarchy Among Founders

 In this episode, I look back to explain why I tossed away $250,000 in billable work as I grew my own business and why my rationale is simply a B2B version of what you should be doing as you plot your own path to scale. Strategic growth requires saying ‘no.’ In CPG, you will actually have to say ‘no’ more as you start getting traction and industry visibility. That’s an irony that professional services firms rarely encounter.Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions.comPlease send feedback on this or other episodes to: admin@premiumgrowthsolutions.com

Episode #55 - Why I Said No to $255K in Work And What You Should Learn From it

Don’t be a fence-sitter. Don’t run your startup via laptop-as-remote control. You have to do all the right things internally or yourself early on if you want to up your chances of finding market validation and a way up the Skate Ramp. Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions.comPlease send feedback on this or other episodes to: admin@premiumgrowthsolutions.com

Episode #54 - I’ll Commit More Time Once There’s Traction...

CPG startups rarely want to discuss anything related to their actual topline performance in press releases or interviews. So, they often beat their chest about their retail door count. And how much it has grown. Who cares, really? This episode gives you something much more important to brag about...if you actually did anything. Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions.comPlease send feedback on this or other episodes to: admin@premiumgrowthsolutions.com

Episode #53 - Brag About Your Fan List, Not Your Door Count

 If you’ve read my book - Ramping Your Brand, you know I have an entire section called “Managing a Small Experiment” for a reason. This episode returns to this theme and reminds founders of why they need to think like a scientist, not just a business person if they want to grow quickly and efficiently. Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions.comPlease send feedback on this or other episodes to: admin@premiumgrowthsolutions.com

Episode 52 - Think Like a Scientist, Plan Your Experiment

 In this episode, I share my behavioral understanding of BigCo employees, especially those in the marketing organizations of large companies. Specifically, I warn founders to be very careful about hiring these folks straight in, despite the impressive resumes and fancy business degrees. They generally do not adapt well and move on, wasting valuable time you don’t have to waste. Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions.comPlease send feedback on this or other episodes to: admin@premiumgrowthsolutions.com

Episode 51 - Why Public Firm Alumni Make Such Bad Startup Employees

In this episode, I once again remind founders that what the layperson refers to as “brand” is really an outcome of a social process. You will never fully control this. You don’t build brands. Consumers do. I describe why this definition matters, how ‘brand’ differs from brand identity (something you actively create and control) and why this distinction matters to you. This is your monthly slice of humble pie. I don’t provide napkins.Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC www.premiumgrowthsolutions.comPlease send feedback on this or other episodes to: admin@premiumgrowthsolutions.com

Episode 50 - Founders Build Businesses. Consumers Build Brands

BigCo has given up on real technical innovation that builds entire new categories and businesses. It’s left to you, the founder, to do this. You have the positioning in the marketplace to conceptualize a solution and then build the manufacturing infrastructure to make it possible. You might be crazy enough to try this. BigCo is not.  In this episode, I discuss how some of the most successful Skate Ramp brands have used technical innovation to prevent competition from appearing for years and sometimes forever. It’s challenging work, but it’s not as expensive as you might think anymore. And it works consistently. 

Episode 49 - The Not-So-Secret Weapon to Eliminating Your Competition

99% of business media stories on startups are essentially PR for the startup itself. This makes these stories a one-sided source of information on what it&apos;s like to operate and grow a startup. While there are more and more discussions of mistakes, basically no one at Inc or Entrepreneur or anywhere else really will ever green light a debate on this or that failed startup unless, like Theranos, it ended in some massive ethical scandal. Failure is depressing, they say. Not me. This month, I&apos;m honored to bring you the first in a two-part interview with Professor Tom Eisenmann of the Harvard Business School (HBS). He and I chat about themes from his new book Why Startups Fail and how these patterns play out in the world of consumer packaged goods (CPG). In the second part of our interview, we discuss more advanced themes in failure:  the Speed Trap, Help Wanted and the challenges staffing up quicklySince joining the HBS faculty in 1997, Tom has led The Entrepreneurial Manager, an introductory course taught to all first-year MBAs, and launched fourteen electives on all aspects of entrepreneurship, including one on startup failure. Eisenmann has authored more than one hundred HBS case studies, and his writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes.

Episode 48 - Why Startups Fail - with Tom Eisenmann Part 2

99% of business media stories on startups are essentially PR for the startup itself. This makes these stories a one-sided source of information on what it’s like to operate and grow a startup. While there are more and more discussions of mistakes, basically no one at Inc or Entrepreneur or anywhere else really will ever greenlight a debate on this or that failed startup unless, like Theranos, it ended in some massive ethical scandal. Failure is depressing, they say. Not me. This month, I’m honored to bring you the first in a two-part interview with Professor Tom Eisenmann of the Harvard Business School (HBS). He and I chat about themes from his new book Why Startups Fail and how these patterns play out in the world of consumer packaged goods (CPG). In this episode, we discuss what to do when you have little business training, how unit economics evolve differently in CPG vs. tech startups, and how to prevent False Positives by doing just the right pre-revenue research. Since joining the HBS faculty in 1997, Tom has led The Entrepreneurial Manager, an introductory course taught to all first-year MBAs, and launched fourteen electives on all aspects of entrepreneurship, including one on startup failure. Eisenmann has authored more than one hundred HBS case studies, and his writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes.

Episode 47 - Why Startups Fail - with Tom Eisenmann Part 1

In the world of consumer brands, it’s common for investors to look down on paid advertising. Why? Because they often don’t see the same kind of trial surge that a temporary price reduction or change in attribute-outcome signaling can deliver. So, they generally see no real return on the expense. However, ROAS has to be calculated on the basis of a longer-term view of how repeat purchasers contribute to the brand.

Episode 46 – Advertising ROAS and Repeat Purchase

This episode teases you with the contents of my quarterly Riding the Ramp online training event. If you want more detail than you found in my book on how to create a compelling strategy and a competitively advantaged 4P playbook, than this training is for you. It’s so important that you attack the market and not just serve the whims of merchandisers. www.premiumgrowthsolutions.com/webinars 

Episode 45 – Competitive Strategy Formulation for Exponential Growth

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.  

Episode 44 – The Future of Trade Shows

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 communications efforts. In some cases, though, it has huge relevance to which channels and banners you sell in and how you sell in those channels and banners. Don’t be arrogant. Launch ready to learn.  

Episode 43 – Your Product Isn’t Done…Sorry

Who is it For? Founders of premium food/beverage 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.rampingyourbrand.com/quiz and sign up for my e-mail list to download it. Founders may also sign up for my monthly VIP white-papers here: www.premiumgrowthsolutions.com/pgs-monthly

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Startup Confidential

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