But try anyway.
When East and West Coast leadership spent 11 weeks trapped in revision hell over our new B2B look, I didn't just keep designing. I pulled the CEO aside, and asked him to take another look at my original wordmark. A week later, the new Marx Foodservice logo was printing on business cards. Perseverance can be revisiting a good idea again when you hit a dead end.
Click a card, any card.
The Problem: Independent shop buyers don't have shelf space or cash to gamble on a brand they've never heard of. We needed to get our clothes into local stores and build wholesale volume without giving away our margins.
What We Did: Before pitching a single store, I ran a cost-of-goods analysis and built a wholesale catalog limited to SKUs that kept a >60% margin. Then I mapped out territories on Google Maps, checked what each shop already stocked, and packed custom sample bags for each one. We walked in cold, handed over line sheets, and let buyers feel the fabric on pieces we already knew fit their racks.
The Result: We grew from 2 to 9 wholesale accounts (350%) in six months and signed our first national distributor. A nice line sheet helps, but wholesale moves when you do the homework on a buyer's store before you walk through their door.
←The Problem: When our main beef supplier capped our imports, we brought on five new beef programs at once. Suddenly our sales reps had six high-end beef lines to sell and no clear way to explain why a chef should buy one over another without cannibalizing our existing accounts.
What We Did: I mapped all six programs across five straightforward variables: feed, origin, age, breed, and price. If two brands overlapped on the chart, the sales team wouldn't know which one to pitch and we'd end up competing with ourselves.
We gave each program a clear lane, from New Zealand coastal-grazed Ocean Beef to high-end Pure Black Wagyu, and ran test kitchens for each one so reps had real tasting notes, photos, and a story a chef could actually use on a menu.
The Result: We added $10.4M in beef program revenue (a 48% jump) over two years, all from the new programs without undercutting our original line.
←The Problem: Food melts, dries out, and can't hold a smile. Luckily I can.
What We Did: Before a test kitchen ever started, I sat down with the CEO and the marketing team to lock in the shot list and business goals. Creative debates happen before the shoot, not while hot food is dying under studio lights. On set, I ran point for three cameras, a chef, a copywriter, and the CEO, calling refires when a plate didn't look right and keeping the room moving.
The Result: Usable A-roll jumped 5x (from roughly 40 to over 200 final shots per shoot) once I split one frantic studio day into two. Day one is strictly raw product shots; day two is all live cooking and action. Nobody burns out, and we don't miss shots.
←The Problem: Organic reach is tough when you're starting from zero, but throwing ad money at boring posts just buys dead clicks. You need posts people actually want to watch, plus a tiny push to get them in front of the right crowd.
What We Did: For Crushworthy, I built our voice from scratch across TikTok, Instagram, X, and Bluesky—treating followers like friends who are in on the joke instead of a target demographic. Starting with our Pride sale video, we put just $50 of ad spend behind our best clips on each platform.
The Result: Those $50 boosts kicked off steady organic growth, and we now pick up new followers and shares every day even when we aren't posting. Paid reach gets strangers to look once; having an actual personality is what makes them stick around.
←My perspective on growing, dying, and how to put as much space as possible between the two.
Imagine no one has ever heard of your product. In fact, I probably haven't either. I happen to think this is great. It's a really key part of how I empathetically investigate sales cycles, which customers we think we're talking to, and what they think they know about us.
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Sometimes I don't know shit about shit. That's a great starting point.
One time a friend of mine called his mom to ask about how long his pothos (house plant) would get. She said, "plants either grow, or they die." Huh. Sometimes I feel like if I don't grow, I will die.
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Everything is hard. But try anyway.
Beautiful work that never gets published is worthless. Worse than worthless. It's a dead weight on the ability to pivot to time-sensitive content. Agility in leadership means removing obstacles, equipping the team with the right tech, upskilling them where necessary, and getting beautiful shit into the world for those sparkling hungry eyes.
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My eyes only sparkle when I'm crying, but that could be a good sign if the content was beautiful.
The truth will set you free, but sometimes it's ugly. Ugly freedom! What a thought. Sometimes I do think freedom is really ugly. But that's sort of the deal we struck, huh?
Anyway, design-by-committee snarls and broken web flows (enough with the popups already) hate to see me coming with my gnarled, outstretched finger.
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I've been the dumper in every relationship I've been in. Unfortunately this means I'm still single, but it does define a way I operate: I don't shy away from difficult truths.
Running wholesale distribution, social, and our Odoo ERP migration for a growing Seattle apparel brand.
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Leading brand positioning, test kitchen shoots, and six white-label beef and specialty protein programs.
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Six years of print, web, video, and studio photography across dozens of vendor brands, capped by the 2024 Marx Foodservice rebrand.
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Built 2–3 new retail brands a month—from 3D location mockups and POS vinyl to video and app UI—for self-checkout market clients.
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Taught credit-bearing digital media classes to undergrads, ran the student media internship program, and shot campus event media.
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Creative Direction is a process I've done my whole life from stand-up comedy, drag, videography, and now leading teams to talk to their customers like humans do. It's cool to like your job.
I graduated from the University of Washington with a BFA in Digital Art & Experimental Media (DXARTS) and a BA in Communication.
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In my off time, I am slowly ticking off my home improvement projects, hosting brunch on Sundays at my place, or relying on my retired drag persona to remind me not to take myself too seriously.
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Whether you're looking for a creative operations leader to scale your brand, or need a little boots-on-the-ground media help, let's build something rad.
Hi!
Ah, I got ahead of myself there. Send me an email or linkedin message first.
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