My first step into CPG was at Red Bull. I stumbled into it. My girlfriend, now wife, was on their sampling team while we were in college. She introduced me to a few of the full time team. All I knew is that everyone there was cool & doing cool stuff. So, I wanted to be a part of it.
After about 5 years of being in orbit of those Red Bull folks, I got my opportunity to join full time in Austin, TX. That was the beginning of my journey into CPG.
Red Bull was a great place to learn the foundations of CPG. I started in field marketing running tried & true playbooks, while pushing the boundaries on those as much as I could. A few years later, I got invited to help build out the fledgling brand department at Red Bull.
This is where I learned the true power of not only the brand, but the business, the full CPG machine that is Red Bull. Outsiders often mistake Red Bull as a marketing company, and even Red Bull didn't like calling itself a CPG brand. But the truth was, it had built a CPG system that made it the unstoppable force that it is today.
In that role I learned trade marketing & saw the power that came from controlling the narrative with distributors & retailers. I learned advertising where I learned the value of resource allocation & staying true to your core brand message (trust me, I wanted to run creative that wasn't the cartoons). Finally, I learned the value of people management by leading an army of part-time brand ambassadors who lived the Red Bull lifestyle.
However, while I was capturing great skills - ultimately I was still running playbooks, and I knew that if I wanted to really master CPG I would need no playbooks, and more importantly, very little budget.
I left Red Bull after 7 years & went back to Austin to dive into their start up ecosystem. I was inspired by all the amazing brands that were coming out of the city I loved so much, and I wanted to feel what it felt like to operate a CPG business with no gaurantee of success.
My first brand was a grain free protein bar called FitJoy Foods. It was a whirlwind flanked by the pandemic and a complete rebrand. I took it from the protein bar aisle, and built it for the salty snack aisle.
After that, I went back to beverage at CLEAN Cause Yerba Mate. They were a slightly more established business, but still with lots of growing pains. That brand forced me to master ecomm as the world was still avoiding retail.
Both brands taught me what accountability to the P&L truly felt like.
Currently, I'm at Electrolit, where we are truly reshaping the sports drink industry. We are taking share faster than any other brand, driving more velocity & generally giving new life to the category.
But for me, this role & brand is truly about me mastering full commercialization from a marketing lens. I've launched multiple new product platforms (Multipacks & Powders) with full value chain builds that have channel specific margin contributions.
I'm a little over three years in & absolutely loving it. Be on the look out for when we take the number two share position in the near future.
I’m a husband — fifteen years together, three kids. I play guitar, mostly for the meditative value rather than any aspiration toward performance. Before Red Bull I did illustration and design work, which explains why I still have opinions about label layouts and visual hierarchy that go a bit beyond the standard business case. I live in Central Texas partly for the family, partly for the food, and partly because finding natural swimming holes is one of the genuine pleasures of my life.
Inherited a failing grain-free protein bar in a saturated category. Made the call to exit, pivot the brand to grain-free pretzels, rebuild from the logo out, and launch three SKUs into natural channel grocery — top-quartile velocities in under a year.
→ Read the case studyBuilt a premium Dijon mustard brand from concept to shelf — recipe, sourcing, manufacturing, value chain, retail accounts. All of it. A true zero to one scenario.
→ Read the case study