Part 5 of the Product Onion Series (Final) Three weeks ago, I had one of those weird moments where everything clicks. I was bouncing between reviewing Trevean Living’s quarterly metrics, sketching out strategy docs for Trevean Spice, and—I kid you not—updating our family meal planning whiteboard. All in the same afternoon. And I kept seeing…

Part 4 of the Product Onion Series My wife found me at 11 PM on a Tuesday, staring at three different apps on my phone, a notebook open on the kitchen counter, and a whiteboard covered in arrows connecting random tasks. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Trying to figure out why we never have…

Part 3 of the Product Onion Series I still don’t have a logo for Trevean Spice. And it’s driving some people crazy. Last week, a well-meaning friend asked: “So when are you launching? I could help you design a website!” Another said: “Have you thought about your Instagram strategy? You need to build buzz early!”…

Part 2 of the Product Onion Series Let me tell you about the moment Trevean Living almost became just another soap company. We were at a farmer’s market—our third one that month. Sales were… fine. People would pick up our bars, smell them, nod appreciatively, and say: “These are nice.” Then they’d put them down…

Let me tell you about the moment I realized I was building my business completely backwards. I was sitting at my kitchen table, surrounded by product samples, market research, and a beautiful brand guide. I had spent weeks perfecting the logo for what would eventually become Trevean Living. The colors were perfect. The packaging looked…

Or: How generational health consciousness is killing traditional food marketing—and what we built instead Hey everyone, I have been fascinated by a YouTube channel I recently subscribed to, created by Michael Gridley. He makes videos about iconic brands that are struggling or have failed, exploring the reasons behind their struggles. If you’re interested in starting…

Sometimes the most transformative business decisions emerge not from boardroom presentations, formal strategy sessions, or even AI-powered analysis, but from a single, honest conversation between colleagues. Let me tell you about a discussion I had that completely shifted our perspective on a major business opportunity—and why these unguarded moments of human dialogue remain irreplaceable in…

The moment of reckoning arrived during what should have been an exhilarating conversation with my co-founder about Trevean Spice. We sat across from each other, laptops open, surrounded by the comfortable chaos of entrepreneurial ambition—sticky notes mapping growth strategies, printed pitch decks for potential investors, product samples scattered across the table like seeds of possibility.…

The hardest part of building a revolutionary spice brand wasn’t perfecting our NFC-enabled freshness tracking or establishing direct farmer relationships. It was finding a name that could carry the weight of transformation we envisioned. Using David Placek’s proven naming framework from Lexicon Branding—the minds behind Pentium, Swiffer, and BlackBerry—we discovered why most spice company names…