The Hardest Lessons I’ve Learned Growing Consumer Brands
Most people see a consumer brand at its polished stage—when it’s on shelves, winning awards, appearing in national retailers, or gaining traction on social media. What they don’t see is everything that happened to get there: the unexpected turns, the costly lessons, the failed bets, the uncomfortable truths, and the moments where clarity arrives only after the stakes are high enough that the lesson can’t be ignored.
I’ve spent more than 20 years building, scaling, and guiding consumer brands. I’ve done that work inside billion-dollar corporations, inside founder-led startups, and now as a fractional CMO embedded in the leadership teams of growth-stage CPG companies. If there’s a throughline across all of those experiences, it’s this:
Growing a brand isn’t glamorous. It’s gritty, humbling, and full of lessons you often don’t realize you’re learning until much later.
As I reflect on my past experiences, this article is my attempt to share some of those lessons—not the surface-level insights you could find on a podcast or a quote graphic, but the deeper truths that shape how I lead, how I advise founders, and how I make decisions designed to protect a brand’s future, not just its next milestone.
These are the lessons that stick with you. The ones that change how you approach retail, marketing, growth, and leadership. The ones that shape a founder just as much as they shape the brand.
Lesson 1: A Great Product Isn’t Enough — Not Even Close
Founders often enter the industry believing that extraordinary products win on their own merit. And in a perfect world, they would.
But retail isn’t a perfect world. It’s a competitive ecosystem with limited space, tight margins, high expectations, and shoppers who don’t wake up thinking about your brand.
The product is only the starting point.
What happens next—the clarity of your positioning, the strength of your story, the consistency of your execution, the discipline behind your margins, and the strategy behind your pricing—determines whether you’re a momentary trend or a sustainable brand with room to grow.
Some of the best products I’ve ever worked on struggled on shelf because the brand relied on taste and ignored the infrastructure required to support it.
The product matters.
But the plan matters more.
And that brings me to a second, equally important truth.
Lesson 2: Packaging Is Your First Impression—And You Rarely Get a Second Chance
I’ve sat in dozens of category resets and packaging reviews over the years. I’ve watched innovation teams fight for new ideas, and I’ve watched retailers evaluate items on criteria most consumers (and many founders) never consider.
Packaging is one of the most unforgiving parts of the retail environment.
It’s your billboard, your salesperson, your educator, and your differentiator—all competing for attention in a three-second window.
Three seconds.
That’s all you get.
If your packaging doesn’t immediately answer:
What is it?
Why does it matter?
Why should I choose it over everything around it?
…you’ve already lost the shopper.
One of the hardest lessons for founders is this:
If you have to explain your packaging, your packaging is the problem.
Not the shopper.
Not the retailer.
Not your marketing.
It is incredibly difficult to create distance between your vision and the reality of what a shopper sees at shelf. But until you do, your product is operating with a built-in handicap that no amount of marketing can fully overcome.
Lesson 3: Cash Doesn’t Disappear — It Leaks
Most brands don’t experience one catastrophic financial event. They experience a series of small, subtle, easily overlooked decisions that collectively drain cash flow.
It looks like:
A promotional plan that isn’t fully budgeted
Distributor fees you underestimated
Freight increases that quietly eat margin
Chargebacks that surprise you
Agencies that don’t ladder up to outcomes
Over-buying inventory “just in case”
A retail launch without a clear support plan
A packaging update that triggers new MOQs
An operational inefficiency no one noticed
Individually, these don’t look like big problems. Collectively, they change your financial trajectory.
This is why retail math matters so deeply.
This is why visibility matters.
This is why clarity on fully loaded costs matters.
A brand’s financial health isn’t defined only by its revenue.
It’s defined by its discipline.
And discipline requires visibility into the places where cash leaks before you feel the impact. Get my FREE Profit Leak Detector Checklist below.
Lesson 4: Retailers Don’t Just Buy Products — They Buy Confidence
When I walk into a buyer meeting with a founder, I can usually predict within the first five minutes how the conversation will go.
Not because of the product.
Not because of the slide deck.
Because of the founder’s confidence.
Confidence doesn’t mean absolute certainty.
It means preparedness.
Retailers want to know:
Do you understand your category?
Do you understand your numbers?
Can you speak in velocity, margin, SRP, and trade spend?
Do you have a plan to support the business once you’re in?
Have you considered the operational implications?
The product is a fraction of the conversation.
The rest is trust.
Retailers are busy. They’re under pressure. They need to know that you can be a partner, not a project.
Confidence—grounded in knowledge, not in bravado—is one of the greatest assets a founder can bring into a buyer room. It signals maturity, readiness, and reliability. Retailers remember that. They bank on that.
Confidence isn’t built the night before a meeting.
It’s built in the months of preparation leading up to it.
Lesson 5: Scaling Too Fast Is More Dangerous Than Not Scaling at All
Every founder wants new doors, bigger accounts, and national visibility. Growth is exciting. It feels validating. It feels like progress.
But here’s the lesson most founders don’t want to learn the hard way:
Growth without readiness becomes a liability.
Retail amplifies everything that’s already happening inside your business:
If your margins are tight, scale magnifies the problem.
If your operations are fragile, scale exposes the cracks.
If your packaging is unclear, scale accelerates lost opportunities.
If your marketing is underfunded, scale highlights the gap.
If your distribution is inefficient, scale strains your team and cash flow.
More doors create more pressure, not more stability.
The brands that scale well are the ones that build internal alignment, strengthen their operational backbone, and create a marketing plan that supports both trial and repeat—not just the launch moment.
Scaling is not about speed.
It’s about foundation.
The brands that understand this are the ones that last.
Lesson 6: Founders Set the Tone — And the Pace
After working with both corporate executives and entrepreneur-founders, I’ve learned that the founder’s clarity is often the single biggest determinant of brand momentum.
When founders are clear—on positioning, priorities, margins, expectations, and next steps—the team can move with confidence.
When founders are unclear, everything slows down.
Clarity doesn’t mean you know everything.
It means you know what matters most right now.
It means you have:
A simple strategy
Aligned priorities
A defined problem to solve
A vision people can rally around
The discipline to ignore distractions
Businesses don’t get stuck because they lack ideas.
They get stuck because they lack alignment.
The founder sets the direction.
The brand follows the energy.
Lesson 7: A Weak Plan Is More Expensive Than Any Retail Fee
Slotting fees don’t break brands.
Trade spend doesn’t break brands.
Distributor markups don’t break brands.
What breaks brands are:
Launching too early
Weak messaging
Unclear packaging
Inconsistent founder alignment
Poor pricing architecture
Unsupported velocity goals
Misunderstood retail requirements
Underestimating the marketing needed to win
Relying on DTC instincts in a retail environment
The most expensive mistake is entering retail without a strong marketing, financial, and operational foundation.
Retail rewards preparation and punishes improvisation.
This is the lesson I repeat most often.
The brands that succeed aren’t the ones that avoided risk.
They’re the ones that anticipated it.
Final Reflection: The Hardest Lessons Become the Most Valuable Guides
Every founder I’ve ever worked with has experienced some version of these lessons. Some see them early. Some see them late. Some ignore them until they can’t.
But once you learn them—truly learn them—they change everything:
How you approach retail
How you manage cash
How you lead your team
How you build your brand
How you make decisions
How you scale
These lessons are not roadblocks. They’re guardrails.
They’re reminders that growth requires clarity, discipline, and a plan that respects the reality of the retail ecosystem—not just the aspiration of it.
And if you’re reading this and recognizing your own experience, consider it a sign that you’re right where you’re supposed to be.
Growth is rarely smooth, but it’s always shaping you into the leader your brand will need next.
If you’d like to talk through where your brand sits today—or where it may be leaking margin, clarity, or momentum—schedule some time with me. I’m here. It’s the work I love most.