The brand exists before the logo does.
Naming systems, positioning decks, and voice guides for founders who are ready to mean something.
Selected Work
The work is the argument.
Click any card to read the case — the tension, the question, and the slide that changed the room.
Naming System
Kin & Current
A heritage textile brand entering DTC. The founder kept calling it "elevated basics." We spent three sessions killing that phrase.
Pull Quote
"Strategy is the art of deciding what you will never say."
Positioning Deck
Meridian Health
Series A healthtech rebranding away from "wellness" into clinical authority. The strategic question: can you sound rigorous and still feel warm?
Voice Guide
Farrow & Loom
Family business, third generation. The heir wanted to modernize without erasing the founder's handwriting from the brand.
14
naming systems delivered in 2024
Each one began with a conversation about what the founder was afraid to say out loud.
Brand Architecture
Vault Financial
Fintech for generational wealth. The tension: sounding serious about money without sounding like a bank your grandfather hated.
Naming System
Oleander Studio
DTC skincare brand. The brief said "clean beauty." We spent the first session explaining why that phrase no longer means anything.
Free Resource
The Naming Toolkit
The exact framework used in every naming session — the seven questions, the tension matrix, and the single test that eliminates 80% of bad names before a client ever sees them.
The 7 questions before any name is considered
The tension matrix (one page, used in every session)
How to kill a name without killing the room
On Strategy
Every founder arrives with a story that doesn't fit the slide deck yet. The tension is the work. We don't name things to describe them. We name things to claim a position in someone's mind before they've ever seen the product. Strategy is the discipline of choosing what you will never say.
The Library
Thinking out loud.
Naming System
Kin & Current
A heritage textile brand entering DTC. The founder kept calling it "elevated basics." We spent three sessions killing that phrase.
Pull Quote
"Strategy is the art of deciding what you will never say."
Positioning Deck
Meridian Health
Series A healthtech rebranding away from "wellness" into clinical authority. The strategic question: can you sound rigorous and still feel warm?
Voice Guide
Farrow & Loom
Family business, third generation. The heir wanted to modernize without erasing the founder's handwriting from the brand.
14
naming systems delivered in 2024
Each one began with a conversation about what the founder was afraid to say out loud.
Brand Architecture
Vault Financial
Fintech for generational wealth. The tension: sounding serious about money without sounding like a bank your grandfather hated.
Framework
"The logo is the last decision. Every other decision is strategy."
Essay
On Naming and the Fear of Being Specific
Why founders choose vague names — and what it costs them when their market matures. Published in The Brand Dispatch.
Naming System
Oleander Studio
DTC skincare brand. The brief said "clean beauty." We spent the first session explaining why that phrase no longer means anything.
Principle
"A brand without a point of view is a product waiting to be commoditized."
Talk
The Naming Session (Recorded)
42 minutes on how to run a naming workshop that doesn't end in compromise. Watched by 3,400 founders since September.
Framework
The Tension Audit
A one-page diagnostic I run in every first session. Surfaces the contradiction the brand is trying to hold — and whether it can.
7
questions I ask before naming anything
Most of them make founders uncomfortable. That's the point.
Essay
Why Your Brand Voice Guide Is Probably Wrong
Voice guides that describe adjectives instead of decisions are decoration, not direction. Here's the difference.
Framework
"The logo is the last decision. Every other decision is strategy."
Essay
On Naming and the Fear of Being Specific
Why founders choose vague names — and what it costs them when their market matures. Published in The Brand Dispatch.
Principle
"A brand without a point of view is a product waiting to be commoditized."
Talk
The Naming Session (Recorded)
42 minutes on how to run a naming workshop that doesn't end in compromise. Watched by 3,400 founders since September.
Framework
The Tension Audit
A one-page diagnostic I run in every first session. Surfaces the contradiction the brand is trying to hold — and whether it can.
7
questions I ask before naming anything
Most of them make founders uncomfortable. That's the point.
Essay
Why Your Brand Voice Guide Is Probably Wrong
Voice guides that describe adjectives instead of decisions are decoration, not direction. Here's the difference.
One Practice. No Associates.
"I take three clients a quarter. The work is better that way."