Five breakout consumer brands. Twenty years. Every budget level, from a folding table at a run club to a $10M+ brand budget. What stays constant: find the community first, and the brand follows.
I have spent two decades doing one thing in different forms: finding the communities a brand should belong to, then earning a real place inside them. At Vita Coco that meant run clubs and CrossFit boxes while our competitor bought marathon sponsorships. At WTRMLN WTR it meant meeting consumers at the point of sweat. At RYZE it means millions of DTC customers who walk into Target already knowing the brand.
I have done it with almost no money and I have done it with a $10M+ budget. The playbook changes. The instinct does not.
Today I lead Brand Marketing and Communications at RYZE Superfoods, a DTC-native functional coffee brand scaling into national retail. I own brand, creative, organic social, influencer and affiliate, PR, experiential, retail marketing, licensing and partnerships, and consumer insights, with a 30-person team and seven direct reports.
What I love most is the build: new communities, new customer bases, and a brand that evolves without losing itself.
Leading brand through its most critical growth phase: national retail expansion, new category entry, and the shift from performance-led growth to full-funnel brand building. The engine is a DTC-to-retail flywheel, where millions of existing DTC customers create the awareness that makes every retail launch land harder.
First marketing hire at a pre-launch RTD cocktail brand. Built the entire function: social, influencer, PR, creative, and shopper marketing. Budgets were small, so I did everything from writing the can copy to creating the "Drink Better" campaign to building the "Can Team" ambassador program as an alternative to paid influencers.
Joined pre-launch, before the ships had sailed, so every partnership had to earn its keep in acquisition, email capture, or revenue. Structured creative deals like making Crosley the official record player of the RockStar suites, which doubled as a revenue item sold on board.
At WTRMLN WTR, led a team of 20 with a focus on education and reaching consumers at the point of sweat, and amplified the brand's Beyoncé partnership through tour activations and media. Then brought into ONE Bar as interim Head of Field Marketing during its repositioning from fitness brand to lifestyle brand.
Led a 20-person team across athlete, event, opinion leader, and grassroots marketing in the Miami market, adapting global brand strategy to local culture.
One of the first ten employees, with no distributor and almost no budget, up against ZICO and its deep pockets. While they sponsored marathons, we went deep instead of wide: run clubs, running stores, and a national CrossFit partnership I identified and built before anyone else saw it, which opened trust, credibility, and new channels including military retail.
If you're building a brand that deserves a real community behind it, I'd love to talk.