How we work together
Most branding is sold as one large price for something you cannot picture. This is split into three, so you always know what you are paying for, what you get at the end of it, and what happens next.
Tap a stage to see everything it covers. Each one carries the stage before it — nothing is paid for twice.
Three businesses built this way, from nothing
Simrock
The first business I launched end to end. Someone with thirty years of expertise and no company around it — name, positioning, identity, site and the framework it now sells.
One book to five sub-brands →
Design Foodie
Mine. A gap nobody had filled, turned into a product line I still run — name, look, pricing, and a system that lets a new kit ship in an afternoon.
350+ sales · 4.9 stars · Etsy Star Seller →
Cream of the Crop
A formulation made at a kitchen table, turned into something with a name, a label, and a shelf it could sit on.
Kitchen table to product →
Start here · before anything is paid
Twelve questions, four minutes. It tells you which of three things is costing you customers — and which stage below you actually need. Sometimes it says you do not need me at all.
Free. No email required to see the result.
What the whole thing costs
A studio will quote $5,000 to $15,000 for the same work, usually as one payment before anything starts. This is three payments, each one after you have seen what the last one produced.
And you can stop after any stage. Most people do not, but the option is real — I would rather you left after Decide with one sentence that works than spend thousands on something you were not sure about.
If you have not sold anything yet, do that first. One job, a real price, someone who is not family. A brand built on an untested guess is an expensive way to find out, and I would rather tell you that now than take the work.
Not sure which stage you need?
Bring the business and the problem. I will say which stage fits, what it would cost, and whether you need me at all — sometimes the answer is go and sell one more first. No pitch, no deck, nothing to prepare.
Free · 20 minutes · video call · weekday evenings, Eastern
Every stage has an end date
A job without an end date eats a year. The clock runs on us and stops when it is with you — days spent waiting on your decision, your photographs or a login do not count against the window. That is why we ask for decisions back inside three working days.
From the first call to the positioning signed off.
From the direction being chosen to the brand kit handed over.
From the words and pictures being final to the handover call.
If a stage waits on you for more than fourteen days, it goes on hold — not as a penalty, but because the slot goes to somebody else rather than sitting empty. A held stage restarts any time inside ninety days at the price you already paid. After ninety days the job closes, everything finished is yours, and nothing further is owed. The same clock binds us: if we miss a window for our own reasons, the work carries on at no extra cost, and if we are more than fourteen days late you can stop and get back any stage paid for and not received.
Included in every stage · no charge
A developer, a printer, a sign or wrap shop, a photographer, an embroiderer. You get an introduction to somebody we would use ourselves — with the artwork, the colour values and the specification attached to that same message, so nobody starts from a blank page and nothing gets rebuilt twice.
No commission from them, no markup on their price. You pay what they charge.
We do not hire them, manage the job or chase the schedule. Price, timeline and the work sit between you and them — nobody in the middle.
Already have a printer or a developer you trust? We brief them in exactly the same way.