ABOUT
Most plans are designed by people who won’t have to run them.
For twenty years I’ve built strategy and process inside agencies and enterprise teams, for brands like Toyota, Heineken and AB InBev, and I still do. Along the way, I co-founded a brewery and took over an independent cinema, and ran both alongside that work. So I’ve been on both sides of the same plan. I’ve designed it for clients, and I’ve had to make my own work on a Tuesday in February. I Will Be Frank With You exists because of what I learned in the gap between the two.
Both sides of the table
On the agency side, I’ve turned a Toyota webpage redesign into $150K in annual savings, and aligned 50+ retail brands on one product at Comenity. On the owner side, I moved a brewery into self-distribution during COVID and had our two most profitable years, and kept a cinema open while theaters that had run for decades closed around us. Same lesson every time. Someone brings me in for one thing. I find the real thing. We move.
What that means for how I work
- I design with the people who will run it, not for them.
- Nothing ends until it’s working, and there’s a way to know it’s still working after I’m gone.
- The same approach holds for a brand team, an agency or a growing business, because I’ve worked inside all three.
